Save One Thing
by magicicada
Summary: It would take something stronger than magic to make Dudley Dursley a hero. Harry, Dudley, slash. Complete.
1. 1

Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

**Save One Thing**

**Chapter 1**

The letters come out of eggs and down the chimney. They slither in through the mail slot and pile up in the drawers of your dad's desk until the wood begins to creak and swell. Outside, they fall from the sky like snow, and Harry closes his eyes and presses his forehead against the window, and you wonder if he'll be able to make glass disappear again so he can run out and catch them as they drift through the air. But the glass stays where it is, and so does Harry, and so do you.

You feel a smile tugging at your lips, because your dad is walking up behind him, and he doesn't even notice. One of his hands is pressed flat against the window pane, and his breath fogs over the glass. He still hasn't opened his eyes.

"What do you think you're doing, boy?" your dad shouts, but Harry doesn't turn around. It's only when your dad pulls the shade down, nearly slamming his head with it that he moves at all. "You're to stop this nonsense, understand?"

Harry looks up at him, as if he's just woken from a strange dream or as if he thinks this might be a dream and he's waiting for it to end. Normally, the sound of your dad's voice makes him jump nearly out of his skin, but this time it's different. This time a lot of things are different.

You flop down onto the sofa and try to watch the television, but you can't concentrate. The voices are full of static. They fade and blend together, and the pictures are dull and blurry so that you have to squint to see anything properly. You think you might want to know what the letters to Harry say. You think you might want that more than you ever wanted anything before.

It's getting hot by the time you sit down for breakfast, and everything feels itchy and uncomfortable. The eggs Harry cooks are rubbery and tasteless. There's sweat collecting in back of you knees, and whole house smells like owls. You eat fast, and your mum makes Harry put down his toast to clear your place when you've finished.

In the hallway, the letters are spread out on end tables and overflowing from the waste bin as even more begin to sprout up like weeds in the cracks between floorboards. You grab a few and shove them into your pockets before running up the stairs and shutting yourself in your room.

Your hands are damp and shaking as they hold paper thicker than any you've ever seen before. It's crumpled and smudged with your fingerprints, which shouldn't matter to you, because you were never good at keeping things from breaking or tearing or falling apart completely.

There are six altogether that you managed to take— only six but six more than Harry has, and you lay them carefully out on your bed in a neat row before flopping down yourself, causing a loud snap as one of the support boards beneath you breaks.

The letters, Harry's letters, seem to straighten themselves before your eyes. The wrinkles become smooth, and the grease stains fade back into sharp white. This is when you first look at the address. _Mr. H. Potter,_ they say,

_Mr. H. Potter_

_Second Floor_

_Smallest bedroom_

_4 Privet Drive _

_Little Whinging _

_Surrey_

And then you touch the first letter. You can feel your heart beating faster as the name melts away and reshapes itself, and then it's not Mr. H. Potter anymore. It's _Dudley Dursley— _your name right beneath your fingers in cool green ink. You open it, ripping the paper rather than breaking the seal, and it's your name again—

_Dudley Dursley,_

_This letter is not for you._

Your stomach drops. It's not signed, at least not where you can see it. You touch the second letter.

_Dudley Dursley_

_4 Privet Drive_

_Little Whinging _

_Surrey_

And you look inside.

_You should not be opening other people's mail._

And the third.

_Dudley Dursley _

_Second floor_

_4 Privet Drive_

_Little Whinging _

_Surrey_

_You would do well to mind your own business. _

And the forth.

_Dudley Dursley _

_Second floor_

_Largest Bedroom _

_4 Privet Drive_

_Little Whinging _

_Surrey_

_This is your last warning. _

And then the fifth, without pause to think or even catch your breath.

_Dudley Dursley_

_Second floor_

_Largest Bedroom_

_Broken bed_

_4 Privet Drive_

_Little Whinging _

_Surrey_

_This letter is for your cousin, Harry Potter. It was meant to be seen by him alone, and the truths it contains are not for the eyes of fat, spoiled, muggle children. You see, Dudley, Your cousin is rather extraordinary. Gifted, I believe, is the word your schools use for it, and while he far surpasses your abilities in reading and maths, it is not those subjects where his true talents lie. You see, Harry is a wizard, and he will soon be the greatest wizard of the age. _

_No matter how your parents try to stop him, he will come to Hogwarts School to learn magic. He will do things and see things a boy like you could never dream of, and when he finishes, Dudley, he will be able to destroy you with a word, though, I expect we'll find some use for you yet. It would be wise to mind yourself around him. _

_Albus Dumbledore,_

_Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry_

You put the sixth letter in a shoebox, and you put the shoebox in the bottom drawer of your dresser. You promise yourself you won't open it or look at it or even think about it. Then, you sit carefully back down on your bed, and your mind fights to stop your hands from shaking.

The television is on, and the computer is on, making little bleep-bleep noises, and the mobile phone you keep in your room starts ringing. You turn the volume on your play-station up, and you try for a few rounds of _Mega Mutilation_, but you're too dizzy and hot to stay still and too weak to move, and you drop the handset to the floor and stand up and close your eyes, and the electronic roar of the game gets louder, but all you can hear are the hundreds of wing-beats that fill the outside sky.

Voldemort stands in a fairy circle in a clearing just past the center of the forbidden forest. He's chanting something in Parseltongue, something to make use of the power bound in mushrooms and dead grass. Harry crouches behind a tree with Ron hunched up next to him and Hermione a few feet away weaving complicated shielding charms. She finishes her murmuring, and the air around them shimmers golden.

"You okay?" Ron asks. "That should have taken longer."

"The magic," she whispers. "It's getting stronger. It's like the spells are doing themselves. I hardly have to concentrate at all."

"Works for me," Neville mumbles from the branches above them. "I need all the help I can get." There's a sharp rustling of leaves as Ginny maneuvers herself to give the back of his head a light slap.

"Stop it, Neville!"

Ron cranes his neck to look up at them. "Stop it, both of you." He rubs his hands over the scars on his arms. "I don't like this. If it's easier for us, it has to be easier for them too."

Harry can't say anything. He can scarcely let himself think anything. He's by no means proficient at Occlumency, and what he can manage takes all of his concentration. He presses his back flat against the base of the tree and tries to sharpen his focus as the forest floor around him starts to shake. Seconds later, Luna Lovegood appears in sight, followed by Grawp and a disgruntled looking Zacharias Smith.

"Hermy?" Grawp asks, and Harry shuts his eyes briefly to center his thoughts and points to Hermione.

He hears Ginny's voice above him saying, "What on earth is that?" followed by Neville's stammered answer of, "I-I think it's a giant,"

Luna looks up at Grawp and then back to the rest of them. "Oh yes," she says. "He wanted to come along,"

"Well I didn't," says Smith. "I was just looking for a lost quaffle, and Loony here dragged me into the forest."

"Grawp help," Grawp announces proudly.

Smith sneers, and his eyes shift over to the giant. "Not much, you don't."

Luna smiles dreamily. "He's really quite brilliant, you know. We were just discussing whether the decline of the nargle population in Scotland is what's making it so exceedingly warm. We also think it may have something to do with changing magical patterns, don't we, Grawp."

Grawp grunts.

"Oh, Merlin," Ron mutters, and Harry has to close his eyes and bite his lip to keep from laughing.

Hermione silently moves closer to the main crowd. "Quiet, all of you!"

"You okay there, Harry?" Ron asks, but Harry isn't okay anymore. His concentration is slipping away, and Voldemort is at once in his head laughing, and outside continuing to hiss his spells.

"He knows," Harry says. "It's all my fault. He knows."

"What?" Hermione and Ron say at the same time.

"He knows I'm here." Harry takes a deep breath and opens his eyes. "He knows all of us are here."

"Close your mind, Harry!" Ron nearly screams.

"Weren't you listening? It won't do any good. He knows. We have to—"

"Close it," Ron says, eyes shining strangely, and Harry struggles to comply, but the doorway in is damaged and the battering ram of Voldemort's thoughts continues to attack at its weakest points. He manages to shut his mind again, and when he hears Ron's voice it sounds like it's coming from very far away. "Harry's right, everyone, we have to attack, but he doesn't have to know which way we're coming from."

Harry clenches his teeth, and he feels the muscles in his neck straining. "Hurry up, Ron."

"Right, right," Ron nods and quickly turns to Luna and Smith. "You . . ." He hesitates briefly, looking up at Grawp. "You three circle around we don't want any stray death eaters getting us in the back." They all nod and head off along the outer perimeter of the clearing. Then Ron knocks a fist on the trunk of the tree, and there's an answering of snapping twigs from above. "Ginny," he says. "We both know mum's going to kill me for this, but I want you and Neville up on your brooms cursing anything wearing a mask."

"B-brooms?" Harry hears Neville whisper, and whatever Ginny says to calm him, he can't make out, but seconds later he can see two small silhouettes rising above the treetops. Then, Ron turns to him.

"Harry, you know there's something he won't . . ."

"Expect."

"Plan for. . ."

And because talking is too difficult, the rest of the conversation is held without words.

_No hiding._

_No deceptions. _

_A straight on attack_.

"Yeah," Harry whispers. "Yeah, I know."

Hermione puts one hand on his shoulder and awkwardly pats Ron's back with the other. "We're with you."

"But the shields—"

She shakes her head, and her cloud of hair brushes his face. "The shields don't matter now."

Blood is welling up in Harry's scar, but the tears that blur his vision have little to do with the pain it causes. "He's trying to get in again. I can feel him."

"It's worse now?" Hermione asks.

"Stronger," he says. "Like you said before, everything's stronger."

Ron stands up and nods his head once. "So are we."

It started with you saving Harry's letter, and you wouldn't have kept it if you'd known better, but back then, you thought one thing couldn't hurt, even if it was a freak thing. You didn't think about it often, it just stayed where you put it and slowly became a permanent mark on the hidden landscape of your room along with the failed history exams under your bed and the dirty magazines Denis gave you in your closet and the cigarettes hidden practically everywhere.

The next year it was a feather you ripped from the wing of Harry's owl that joined the letter in the shoebox in the bottom drawer of your dresser. Then it was twigs from the broom he said could fly and a jar labeled armadillo bile and a page of magical newspaper with moving pictures of a band called the Weird Sisters on it. And you thought, maybe it was the letter that made you do it all. Maybe you save one thing, and you have to save another and another until saving things becomes a habit you can't break

It's only natural that after saving so much for yourself you should have to give something in return, but you never thought like that before, and you never thought that the fifth letter really meant everything it said. And it's not the chill of the air that hurts— it's knowing nothing will be warm again— ever. And you start to repeat you own name over and over, because at any moment, you could forget what it is and who you are and why you're on the ground in the alley by Magnolia Crescent freezing and unable to move.

You see yourself running from a huge snake and cowering at the feet of a giant. You watch your face turn purple as you choke on your own tongue, and you watch you arms flailing as you drown in a sea of letters, and you watch as everything gets dull and dark, and there's nothing left to see. And then, suddenly, there's light and sound and Harry standing over you, and the first thing you remember when your awareness comes back all in a rush is that you hate him. You hate more than you ever hated anything before in your life.

You wondered, later, if it was because you made fun of Harry's nightmares that he made you see those things that would make you never want to sleep again, and you wondered if it had to do with the warning in the fifth letter, because your mum got a freak letter that same night, and it yelled at her in a horrible, screeching voice, but your head was too foggy to make out the words.

She seemed to understand it more than you did. There were some freak things called Dementors that only freak people like Harry could see, but you could feel them, somehow, even though you didn't think you were supposed to, and somehow, you couldn't stop feeling them even when they were gone.

Magic began to follow you around like an invisible cloud of fine mist, and it never did anything more than flash in the corners of your eyes just to remind you what was capable of— power and control and all the things you could never stand against, and even so, you refused to concede, refused to admit that being normal made you weak. And if that was all you could hope for, then you would make it a victory.

So you stopped smoking and hoped things would start tasting right again, but they never did, so you ate more to make up for it. And they kicked you off the boxing team when your marks went down, but it wasn't your fault that test paper seemed too thin, and the sky was always full of owls. And now, you're scared of shadows and the cold. And you slide the palms of your hands over walls when you walk to make sure there's always something solid nearby to grab onto. And you hope you're heavy enough to stay in place when the world starts slipping away.

Harry's lucky.

Hermione and Ron were with him the entire way, ahead of him even, but by some incredible chance his foot was the first to touch down onto the dried grass of the circle, and Voldemort had turned the very ground into a portkey. It shouldn't have been possible, but magic is getting stronger.

There are huge rips and tears along the sides of Harry's jumper from where his friends tried to grab on and go with him. He has marks from Hermione's fingernails lining his right forearm, and he's pretty sure Ron's left with the clump of hair he grabbed trying to hold him in place, but the dull ache in the back of his head is nothing compared to the dizziness that always comes with portkey travel and the overwhelming nausea that always comes with standing face to face with Voldemort and having Voldemort's laughter ringing in his ears.

They're in the graveyard— the same one they were in fourth year, standing in a circle of grey rocks, probably chipped from the crumbling headstones. Harry thinks he may have broken his ankle on the landing. He falls to the ground and fumbles through his pockets for his wand, and he's lucky. He's about to die, but he can't keep himself from smiling, because wherever they are, and for however long will last, his friends are safe. He's keeping them safe. And he couldn't be more lucky.

There are Death Eaters all around, but Harry sets up a shield, and he doesn't even have to think to maintain it. Voldemort's curses are powerful, but they seem to come at him in slow motion. Everything is more vivid, and Harry can tell just form the bend of his wand what he'll need to do to block them.

Harry keeps himself so busy with defense that it takes a while for him to realize he can actually win. The knowledge makes his heart beat faster still, and warms him from the inside like hot butterbeer. In his head, the laughter stops.

The curses come faster after that, but Harry fires back with equal speed, and his ankle is still strong enough for him to run on when he needs to dodge the hexes his shields miss.

In the end, all it takes is expelliarmus. The spell sends Voldemort soaring ten feet backwards and delivers his wand directly to Harry's outstretched hand. Voldemort's eyes burn a brighter red for a second then flicker out and fade to dark blue, as if realizing he can die has made him almost human.

He puts his own wand safely in his pocket and holds Voldemort's with both hands. "This is how it has to be." Harry says. Then he closes his eyes and snaps the wand in two and whispers, "I'm sorry," even though he's not sure who he's saying it to or if he really means it at all.

As the two halves of the broken wand fall to the ground, he's struck by the sudden, horrible knowledge that the only true power is in sacrifice, and things like this always come at a price that no one should have to pay.

The magic that kept Voldemort alive for decades fizzles in the air for a few seconds before dissipating. As it goes, the colors of the world around him become duller, and his shields fall away, and he stumbles over his ankle, which can no longer support his weight. He looks up to the masked faces of the Death Eaters from the center of the stone circle, and smiles as they draw their wands.

He never finds out what spells they were planning to use on him. Before he has the chance, he feels a sharp tug right beneath his navel and lands back in the dry grass of the clearing just past the center of the forbidden forest with his friends standing all around him. They all look slightly singed. Ginny's arm is bent in a way that shouldn't be possible and Luna's sporting a very impressive black eye, but she doesn't seem at all bothered by it.

"I did it," he whispers. "He's gone."

"Of course he is," Hermione says. "We wouldn't have been able to call you back unless you somehow managed to break the connection."

"We also wouldn't have been able to if I hadn't taken some of your hair," Ron adds, and Hermione rolls her eyes.

"Well, that was hardly planned, and you certainly didn't have to grab so much of it."

"Sorry if I was the one who wasn't thinking clearly when I was running right at bloody Vol—Volde— bloody you know who."

"Honestly, Ron," Hermione says with a sigh. "He's dead now, and it was only ever a name."

Harry watches Ron's face hardening and quickly decides to change the subject. "You're all okay?" he asks without getting up.

Hermione nods. "Quite good, considering, Neville had a bit of a time taking down Bellatrix Lestrange, and Smith got a little too enthusiastic with his Incendios and almost burned his own foot off."

"There were Death Eaters here too?" Harry asks, looking over at Neville, who blushes bright red.

"Loads," Ron says. "You should have seen what Ginny did to Macnair. It was brutal."

There's a loud clearing of a throat, and a deep voice from behind him says, "Grawp help."

"Indeed," Hermione says, and Harry watches as she fights to keep a straight face. "Grawp here stepped on Pettigrew."

Ron gives a nasty smile and holds up what looks like a tiny, silver claw. "It was brilliant."

Luna looks down at Harry and then back in the direction of Hogwarts. "Your foot's broken, you know. You're not going to be able to walk."

"Yeah," Harry says. "I kind of figured that."

She nods at him, then grabs the broom from Neville's hand and flies up so she can whisper something in Grawp's ear. Harry lets his head fall back on the ground and smiles.

As it turned out, being carried by a giant wasn't nearly as unpleasant as he would have expected, and though she had a bit of trouble with the spell, Madame Pomfrey was able to fully mend his broken bone, leaving only a thin, barley noticeable scar running the length of his ankle.

Back in the common room, Ron prods the bare patch on the back of Harry's head with a long finger. "I thought you said you could re-grow your hair when you were younger."

"I could."

Ron laughs and flops down on the sofa beside him. "Can't anymore, mate. I thought I would be the one to go bald, what with my dad and Bill."

Hermione's head snaps up her from her book. "Not Bill," she gasps, blushing slightly.

"Yeah," Ron says, looking mildly offended, "He's hideous now, and he's keeping the ponytail, which just makes it worse. No offence to you, Harry."

"It's your fault," Harry mutters.

Ron throws a pillow at him. "It's your fault for being so bloody short that your hair was all I could reach."

"Don't worry," Hermione says. "I'll ask Dobby to give you one of his hats. He has dozens, you know."

He rolls his eyes and crosses his arms over his chest. "Aren't I lucky?"

"Yes," Hermione and Ron answer together, and Harry knows better than to argue.

Two days later, Hermione nervously flicks the end of her quill against her wrist and swears she can no longer see the runes in her books.

Five days later, Ron passes out after performing a simple starching spell on the dress robes his parents sent him for the leaving ball.

One week later, Harry can barely summon sparks.

It's a muggle train, not the Hogwarts Express that takes them back to King's Cross Station. The ride seems much longer. It's too quiet, and Harry doesn't know what to think. Halfway through, Neville, Ginny, Luna and Zacharias manage to squeeze themselves into the compartment he shares with Ron and Hermione, but no one talks. When he thinks about it, he begins to realize that there's nothing left to say.


	2. 2

**Save One Thing**

**Chapter 2**

It's the last day of your last term at Smeltings. Exams are behind you, and you have no idea what's ahead, how you'll squeeze yourself down to fit in and be normal, how you'll make everyone believe there's really nothing different about you, how you'll make yourself believe it too.

Your dorm is empty, and you're still out of breath from walking up the stairs. The other boys are down in the cellar with a few bottles of rum they swiped from the history professor. You're not with them, because drinking makes you dizzy and sick, and it reminds you of another time you felt dizzy and sick— a time you don't want to think about ever again.

You fall into your bed, and your arm brushes the paper of an envelope on your pillow— a stiff envelope surrounded by a few clumps of pale grey feathers, and the first thing you recognize isn't your mum's handwriting or her lawn of the month postage stamp, it's the way the paper feels thick under your fingers and the purple wax seal and the address.

_Dudley Dursley _

_Second floor_

_Largest seventh year dorm_

_Broken bed_

_Smeltings_

You hands are too clumsy to break the seal, so you rip the paper across the top, and the handwriting you see inside isn't your mum's, but you definitely remember it.

_This letter is for you, Mr. Dursley, and I expect you to pay careful attention to what it has to say, though, it is unlikely one such as yourself could ever grasp the true importance of the events imparted herein. You will likely be bothered only by the small nuisance they may cause you personally. You see, your cousin, Mr. Potter, recently brought an end to Lord Voldemort, an evil wizard, who sought to take all the world under his power. As Voldemort's threat grew, we placed many muggles who may have been particularly targeted by him into spell secured houses, so they would be protected. It may not surprise you to learn that with their knowledge of the magical world and their relation to Mr. Potter, your parents were among those muggles, and if Lord Voldemort were alive now, you would have joined them. _

_Naturally, for witches and wizards, this is a time for much rejoicing, and even you should consider it good fortune that the darkest wizard of the age is now gone forever, though not without some complications. Things like this always come at a price. Understand that the magical energy it took to destroy Voldemort has drained our reserves, and none are currently able to take down the spells put in place to hide your parents or use the magical compasses we possess to find their shielded location. _

_I assure you, this situation is not permanent, and your mother and father will be returned to you as soon as we have the means to do so._

_We offer our official apologies for the inconvenience this will undoubtedly cause._

_Albus Dumbledore,_

_Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry_

Your hands are shaking, and you don't bother to try and stop them as you read the letter over and over again and search the envelope for anything else. You find only a short note from your mum, obviously written before she knew she would be trapped.

_Everything's okay, Diddykins. We're fine, and you mustn't be afraid to come along. They say we'll only be here a few days._

But they won't only be there a few days, and things haven't been okay for a very long time. You swallow hard, wondering where you'll go and what you'll do and how anyone will think you're normal now that your parents have mysteriously disappeared.

Summer's just beginning, and your dorm is closed off and stifling, but you have to suppress a shiver. You can feel the magic stronger than before as it runs off the paper and snaps against you skin, and you can see it in faint, shimmering outlines when you let your eyes slide out of focus.

Too dizzy to stand and with nothing to distract you, you lay down with the letter clutched tight in your fist. You try to plan out the remainder of your summer, the remainder of your life— a proper house and a normal job and a schedule ruled by paychecks and bills and nightly television shows.

You ignore the sinking feeling that comes when you think about looking for work at Grundings until it slips away and changes to a vision or yourself alone and lost, wandering through cold alleyways at night. You fall asleep exhausted and angry with your eyes shut tight so you don't have to look at anymore sparks or bright flashes.

You wake up with Gordon poking you in the stomach and Malcolm behind him snickering. They say you were thrashing about and screaming like a girl, but you tell yourself that can't be true. Only freaks like Harry scream in their sleep.

The ride home seems faster than it ever has before, and that could be because you don't want to go home to an empty house, except when you get there, the house isn't quite as empty as you thought it would be.

You find Harry at the kitchen table with newspapers spread all around him, furiously reading and scribbling fast notes in he margins with a feather like the one you have in your shoebox. He looks up at you and smirks as if he's a second from laughing, and then he turns back to the papers and starts writing again.

"Shove off," you say, grabbing the table and shaking it so his feather slips and draws an ugly jagged line across the paper. "I need to get something to eat."

"No," he says, looking at you in a way that makes your skin crawl. "No, you really don't."

"Get up."

"I'm busy."

"Get up, now!"

He makes a show of continuing whatever he was writing, as if he hasn't heard you at all. You shake the table a few more times and kick him in the shin once, but he doesn't even bother to look up at you again. He does get up, eventually, and he takes a long time doing it, making sure every paper is perfectly folded and neatly stacked before carrying them off to his room, and he gives you a stare that says he's leaving because he wants to, not because of anything you did or told him. You sit down and turn on the television and eat the candy bar from your pocket so fast it makes you feel sick afterwards.

Harry keeps his distance for the next few days, passing you only occasionally in the hallways or on the stairs, and he makes sure to stop and back up against the wall, so you have room to walk by, but that doesn't make it any easier.

You didn't expect to see him ever again, and you don't like that he's back. You don't like the way he looks at you, as if you're not really there, and you don't like the way he's constantly shuffling through his trunk of freak things, and you don't like the way he gets letters from his owl right through the front window where everyone can see. You know that if your mum and dad were here they wouldn't let him stay, but they're not, and that's Harry's fault too.

Harry goes back to Number 4 Privet Drive, even though he promised himself he never would. It's not the first promise he's broken.

Grimauld Place was destroyed completely by a cursed explosion one year back, and the Burrow is falling apart piece by piece. Ginny and Ron go to stay with Hermione until they can make it stand on its own without magic. They try to drag him along with them, but he refuses. He doesn't want his friends around if the Death Eaters come for him, and he knows they will come. He remembers the look in their eyes as they stared down at him after he destroyed their master, no matter how hard he tries to forget. It's only a matter of time before they find him.

It's strange to walk freely through the house and not hear Aunt Petunia's shrill cries or Uncle Vernon's gruff orders. There is only Dudley, and even though he's grown to roughly the size of three people, it still seems terribly empty.

On his second day back, Harry gets a letter from Hermione scrawled in pencil on lined notebook paper. Even her normally precise handwriting looks rough and shaky. He almost doesn't want to read it, because everything is different and wrong now, and he can't let himself hope that she has any good news to tell.

_Dear Harry, _

_Something's going on, and you must already have realized it's much bigger than they told us at school. The ministry is still trying to figure out what, but they can't even get into their own building anymore, and we never could rely on them for the truth. This has something to do with you, Harry— something to do with the connection between you and Voldemort. They think that created a balance of some sort, but whatever it was, it's gone now and no one can get any magic to work, not even potions or arithmancy, and all of Neville's plants are dying. _

_You hold the key, Harry. Try to remember the first time you defeated Voldemort— the very first time. We think there might be some clues there. Nothing like this happened then, and we need to know why. We need you. We need to know where all the magic's gone._

_Hermione _

Harry can't remember. He was little more than a year old, and all that he can hold in his mind when he thinks of it are his parent's screams. Hermione's right, as usual. She's right about magic and probably about the ministry too. The Occulmency he put everything he had into learning is certainly useless now. He can't even shut his mind off from the sounds of Dudley belching in the kitchen or stomping up the stairs, and he's sure she suspected as much the second she could no longer see the symbols in her books.

She's wrong about something, though. Defeating Voldemort the first time didn't mean what she thinks it does. It wasn't that he was chosen or marked or loved enough to escape death. It was that he saved something. He saved towns from being destroyed and people from dying in Death Eater raids, and even if it only lasted a few years, that was what made the difference. Of course, magic hadn't deserted them then. Voldemort still lived, without a body perhaps, but he was never really gone— not until now.

Harry knew that if he hadn't done it to save things defeating Voldemort would make him nothing more than a murderer. He broke the wand so his friends would be safe and so Hogwarts would always be there and so muggles could keep living their boring, little lives in their boring, little houses and never question that another world existed just beyond everything they thought was normal. And he knew even that would come at a price. But now, he wonders if it was worth it, and he wonders if he had any right to make that choice for everyone else.

_Dear Hermione, _he writes.

_I tried, but I can't find any clues listening to my parents being murdered. I think even you would have trouble properly remembering back that far. It's a shame I hold the key, as you say, because you would clearly be much better suited for it than I am. There have been other dark wizards in the past. Perhaps your time would be better suited researching the aftermath of the Grindewald wars than pestering me. _

_Harry_

That night Dudley is upstairs playing on his computer, and Harry sits on the sofa in the lounge, trying to remember how it felt to hold his wand for the first time and how happy he was when he managed to conjure a real Patronus and what it was like to fly. He thinks that if he can force his mind back that far he may be able to go a bit farther while still holding on to some good memories, maybe even as far back as Hermione wants, and he already feels bad about sending his letter off with Hedwig before thinking about the things he wrote.

He can't concentrate. He's tired and hungry and aching to move, and there's a strange whirring noise coming from the second floor and muffled voices coming from outside and a sound like fingernails scratching against glass. Tentatively, he rises from his seat and draws back the curtain and comes face to face with the pale, white mask of a Death Eater.

On instinct, Harry reaches in his pocket for his wand, but it's not there, and even if it was, it wouldn't have been of any use. The Death Eater doesn't seem to see him, though. It turns away and walks to where a whole crowd of them stand under the light of a street lamp. They speak huddled together, and Harry cannot understand their words. He notices that some of them hold long wooden sticks and he watches as they step hesitantly onto the front lawn, look around and then turn back as if there isn't anything there to see.

They stay all night and so does Harry, watching them as he crouches by the window. They come the next night too, and the night after that, and sometimes, they get so close he can see their eyes darting curiously beneath their masks, but they never notice him.

It won't last, though. He knows it won't last, and it's only a matter of days or weeks before they find him. He knows he won't be able to fight them when they do, and that hurts the most. He sleeps during the day, when he can, but Dudley rarely keeps quiet long enough for him to get any rest. He reads muggle newspapers and even ventured to quietly turn on TV news a few times, but there's nothing he can recognize as unusual and certainly nothing that could be magic.

It takes over a week for Hedwig to come back with another letter from Hermione. For a while, Harry wonders if she's lost and begins to blame himself for that too, but then, she lands on the table with a thud and doesn't move as he untangles the crumpled paper attached to her leg with a rubber band. Hermione wrote in pen this time, and her handwriting is barely legible.

_Dear Harry,_

_I'm sorry if I came off as nagging the last time I wrote. Are you okay? You can come here, you know. My parents want you to come here. The ministry is putting out its official statements saying that all magic is gone, except they don't call themselves the ministry anymore, because there's nothing left to be ministry of. They think they're just a bunch of people who could do things once but now can't. _

_I don't believe it, not yet. I know it's hard to think of your parents, but there has to be a way. Keep trying, Harry. You have to keep trying._

_Hermione_

He picks up a pen and paper, but he doesn't know what the write. He has to tell the truth. He owes her that much at least, but he can't tell her everything, and her certainly can't accept her offer of coming to stay with her parents. He takes a deep breath, forcing down the lump that rises in his throat. The most important thing is not getting to short with her like he had in his last letter.

_Dear Hermione,_

_I'm sorry I can't remember. I was only a year old. Everyone thinks I should be able to do these things, but I can't. I was trying to make it better, but I think I actually made everything worse. I don't know what else to do._

_I hope you're doing well and Ron's okay and so is everyone else staying with you. _

_Harry_

He rolls the paper gently and gives it to Hedwig, who wobbles and scratches the table with her talons before flying out the window, and he closes his eyes and tries not to think that it could be the last letter he'll ever write. Then, he walks into the lounge to find Dudley sprawled over the sofa, using the remote to flip through channels. Even beneath the noise of the television, Harry can hear the whirring coming from upstairs, and as he draws the curtains closed, he notices that the sun is just beginning to set over the neighbors' identical rooftops. "Can you hear that?" he asks, but Dudley only snorts something inaudible. "What? Can you hear it?"

"Go 'way."

"That noise—"

"It's my radio or my play station or my remote control airplane. I don't know which."

"Well," Harry says, as if he's talking to a complete idiot, which Dudley pretty much is, "why don't you turn them off then?"

Dudley grunts. "Why don't you?"

"Fine," he says, starting to walk away. "Fine, I will."

"You better stay out of my room!" Dudley screams after him, and he hasn't gotten five stairs up before Dudley pushes him halfway over the banister, stumbles into his room and slams his shut door behind him.

Harry slowly walks back downstairs and takes his seat at the window. By the time he gets himself situated, all light has faded from the sky, and the Death Eaters are stumbling through Aunt Petunia's flowerbeds.

The next day he gets a letter from Hermione, only this one comes in the though the mail slot with the muggle post.

_Dear Harry,_

_It's gone. No one can even detect hints of it anymore, not even at Hogwarts. It's not your fault, you know. You saved us. You saved everything. It's just that we spent so long learning every bit of it we could, and now none of that matters because it's gone. I'm sorry. _

_Hermione_

He reads it twice more and takes a deep breath. Then, he stares at a blank sheet of paper, but can think of nothing to write— nothing truthful and certainly nothing comforting. He's almost glad when Dudley storms into the kitchen and demands that he leave.

Back in his room, Harry digs through his trunk, searching for some sign that something might still have a little magic left in it, but when he sees the state of his wand— dull grey and rotting, he shoves what he can under the floorboards so he doesn't have to look at it any longer and leaves the rest scattered on his bed before going back downstairs and waiting for the sky to darken.

He watches more carefully this time, but he still can't tell where the Death Eater's come from. They gather, as they always do, on the sidewalk and the front lawn, and this time, a few of them have traded their wooden sticks for crowbars and knives that gleam faintly in the dim light of the street lamp. He watches as they bend down to pick up pebbles and handfuls of dirt from the garden, and he presses his head to the window, knowing there is only that thin pane of glass separating them.

He wakes early in the morning sore all over with the windowsill digging into his back, and he hears it again— the whirring sound coming from the second floor. It's not in Dudley's room, he finds. Not even Dudley is in Dudley's room, and amazingly, all of his electronic toys are turned off.

Harry follows the sound to his own room, stopping at the doorway when he sees Dudley sitting on the floor poking through his quills and wand care kit with chocolate frogs and peppermint toads hopping around his feet. He watches as Dudley reaches a fat finger out cautiously and touches one then scoots back fast as it springs away in the opposite direction. "They're chocolate," he murmurs to himself.

Harry blinks and takes a deep breath. "They're jumping."

"You!" Dudley turns on him with surprising speed. "What are you—"

"This is my room," Harry snaps, cutting him off. "What are _you _doing in here?"

"I was hungry," Dudley says, as if that explains everything. "And this is my house."

Harry gives him an odd look and then closes his eyes. "No, it's not," he says absently. It sounds like the whirring is coming from right beneath his feet. "What's that noise?"

Dudley shrugs, still starring at the frogs and toads, which start to jump noticeably higher. "Dunno."

"Get out, Dudley."

Dudley stands, trying and failing to catch a few frogs on his way up. "You shouldn't keep your freak stuff just lying about," he says with a sneer.

"You shouldn't touch it," Harry mumbles as Dudley stomps out the door.

He hears the whirring slow to a soft rattle beneath the floorboards that's quickly getting softer, and he pries them open quickly, splintering his fingers, just in time to see the pocket sneakoscope Ron had given him for his thirteenth birthday toppling over onto its side. He takes it out and examines it for a few moments before setting it on his nightstand and watching as it doesn't spin.

On the floor, the frogs and toads have gone still and are beginning to look cracked and chalky around the edges.


	3. 3

**Save One Thing**

**Chapter 3**

Harry's in the kitchen listening to some news program on the radio. He looks at you curiously for a second when you enter and turns it off before you can tell him you'll pound him if he doesn't, but he makes no move to get up. He watches. He watches as you take a piece of fudge cake from the refrigerator and as you take the first few large bites. "Stop it," you say, but he doesn't. He watches, unsurprised, as the television turns on without you touching the remote and as it flicks off when you get up to leave. "What are you playing at?"

"Nothing."

"You-you'd better . . ." You stand there, trying to come up with something to say, but you can't think properly, and you don't know why, but your hands start shaking, and then you hear it— wing-beats.

Harry's owl has turned from white to a dull, yellowish grey, and its eyes look foggy and sick, but Harry still lets it hop all over the table when it flies in through the window. He pats its head for a few seconds, and then, he turns back to you and starts watching again.

"Quit it."

"What?"

"Quit being weird."

"Already have," he says, but your heart starts beating fast, and you can't concentrate to figure out what he means by it. The magic is getting brighter, so bright that you can see it even when you close your eyes. You can feel cool winds swirling all around you, and you hold a napkin between two fingers and drop it to see where those winds are coming from and where they'll carry it, but it falls straight to the counter. You chance a quick look at Harry to see if his mess of hair is blowing about, but it's perfectly still and just the same as always, except for a rather obvious bald patch in the back.

The winds blow harder, touching nothing but your skin, and when you shiver slightly, Harry tilts his head to the side and narrows his eyes. "Stop," you say, but he doesn't, so you grab a grab a package of biscuits and leave. You can feel Harry's stare on the back of your neck all the way to your room.

Harry wasn't sure of it at first. He didn't want to let himself think it could be possible only to be disappointed in the end, but he's been paying attention for the past few days, and over the years, he's grown used to impossible things happening. He isn't surprised when Pig flies into the kitchen and starts trying to make a nest in his hair.

"I heard that," Dudley shouts from the lounge. "I'm bloody sick of your freak bird doing whatever it likes."

"Hedwig's sleeping," Harry calls back, trying to get the tiny owl untangled and vaguely wondering what made Dudley leave his room again.

"Don't lie."

"I'm not lying," he says. "You do know that owls are nocturnal?"

"What?"

Harry rolls his eyes and rakes a hand through his hair, trying to loosen Pig's grip. "They tend sleep during the day," he says with an exhausted sigh. "Day is what it's called when the sun's out and it's not dark. You know, I actually think we've been over this before."

"Shut your face."

Harry expects Dudley to come waddling in and start screaming at him, but instead the television gets louder, and he reminds himself that Dudley's never been one to do any unnecessary walking. A few minutes later, he manages to get Pig out of his hair but only by cutting quite a bit off the top. He absently wonders what state his head must be in now and if he should take Hermione up on her offer of a hat. Beside him, Pig hops excitedly over Dudley's placemat then drops a letter on the table and zips out the window. Unexpectedly, the writing on the envelope is Ron's, not Hermione's.

_Dear Harry,_

_I won't yell at you for not writing to me, since you've obviously gone mental. The thing is I think Hermione has sort of gone mental too. But you shouldn't worry about that— I mean it's all happening in a very Hermione way, all planed out and organized according to colored timetables and corresponding the growing season of mandrakes and the phases of the moon._

_Maybe she's right, and I am just being thick headed like everyone tells me, but I don't think all the magic's gone. I think we would be able to tell if it really was. It's just not where you're looking for it, and you don't have to be looking, Harry. You've done what you needed to. You've done more than enough. It's like when you lose things, and they always turn up in the least expected places. Neville says if it's anything like Trevor it's probably scared and tired and hiding by the lake, snacking on flies until it feels better. I don't know about the flies, but the rest seems to almost make sense. _

_Mum's worried about you. She thinks you should come over here and eat chicken soup and rest until everything's perfect. I think you should just stop trying to save the world, because you're going to drive yourself completely mad. I'd tell you to sit back and do nothing, but you have being a hero beaten so far into your brain by now that you probably can't. So forget about magic and the ministry and all the great big messy problems. _

_Save one thing or save little things or come visit and save me from Percy's lectures on how bloody fascinating muggle money is. I swear, he sent away for something called a kedit card and nearly died of happiness when he saw all the forms to fill out. Then he made me go with him to a bank. I think there was something wrong with it, because there weren't any carts or goblins or anything, just velvet ropes and lines we had to wait in for hours, and he was giggling, Harry. Giggling._

_We're fine, though, at least as fine as we would have been back at home. My brothers are all here, did you know? I don't expect Hermione's been giving you any real news. Everyone's trying to educate me on muggle contraptions or proper manners or the difference between molars and bicuspids. I tried to tell them I'm bloody finished school and don't need any more educating, but they won't listen to me. Nobody ever listens to me. _

_If you're lucky, Pig hasn't made too much of a mess. Sorry if he did. He's been a little jumpy lately, but I thought he would work better than Errol or Hermes on account of him being a normal owl rather than a magical one. _

_Hope your muggles aren't being too horrible._

_Ron_

There's a reason Ron doesn't write letters often and tries to keep them short when he does. It's the same reason Hermione always seemed seconds away from screaming in frustration when she helped him revise his Defense papers and futilely tried to convince him not to include pages on the death of Uncle Bilius. Harry has to read the letter twice before he can get any information out of it and four times before it starts really making sense. He's still looking it over in mild awe when a stubby, pink finger reaches over his shoulder and pins it to the table.

"I know what that is," Dudley says.

"Really?" Harry turns his head slightly and looks up into Dudley's small, watery eyes. "Congratulations."

"It's a freak letter. It's from one of your freak friends."

"I underestimate you sometimes, don't I? Maybe one day you'll even learn how to read."

"I don't want to read that." Dudley says. "It probably has freak germs crawling all over it"

"You're touching it," Harry says absently.

Dudley's finger jumps for a second and trembles slightly but then pushes harder into the paper. "I-I'm not afraid of your stupid letters."

"Oh?"

"You're not allowed to have it here."

"Well I do."

"Get rid of it," he says, and Harry can't help but smile.

"Make me."

There are little beads of sweat popping up all over Dudley's large face, but he's shivering and his teeth are chattering, as if it's cold. Suddenly, all the burners on the stove flare up in swirls of blue-white flame, and Harry can hear Dudley's breath coming in sharp pants as turns and runs clumsily up the stairs.

Harry switches the stove off by hand. That's the only we he can do it now, and he picks up a pen and a piece of paper, and he writes.

_Dear Ron,_

_You're right. You're right about everything, except that it's called a credit card, and muggle banks generally don't have goblins._

_Harry_

At night, Harry sneaks into Dudley's room and watches Dudley sleep. Sometimes Dudley snores, and sometimes he screams, and sometimes he doesn't make any noise at all, but his shoulders rise and fall too quickly, as he jerks and shudders and pulls blankets up over his head. Harry doesn't move to wake him. If this is a spell, he does not want to break it.

Impossible things can happen— he knows this, babies can defeat dark lords and foolish boys can pull enchanted stones from mirrors and swords from hats with nothing more than an unselfish wish. Their impossibility is not enough to stop them from happening, but it won't let them keep going, not long, never permanently. Charmed lives are not made from luck but obligation and responsibility. The magic that protected the baby wears thin as he grows older, and the foolish boy pays for his impetuousness with the lives of those closest to him. However these new shields were made, Harry knows it's only a matter of time before they too fail. It's only ever been a matter of time.

So he concentrates, and outside he can hear the confused voices of the Death Eaters, and through the window he can see their shadows passing through the lamplight. He closes his eyes, and he tries to feel for any faint hints of magic floating in the air, but it's too hot and thick and stuffy, as if there's really not enough left for both him and Dudley to breathe at once. But no matter how uncomfortable the room becomes, Harry stays, and he silently wills Dudley to stay asleep and to not find him there and to keep doing whatever it is he's doing, however he's doing it, for as long as he can.

You stumble into Harry in the hallway, and this time he doesn't move to the side to let you pass. "Out of the way," you say, and at first, you can't even tell if he heard you. His eyes are red around the edges and he still hasn't changed out of yesterday's clothes. Even his hair is worse than usual, messy and noticeably shorter in some places. If you look close, the bare patch seems bigger, and you don't like having to see Harry's hair. It makes you think about the time your mum shaved it all off, and it makes you think about what she would do if she were here, if she would give you Harry's room back and whether your dad would start taking you along to work. "Move it," you say, but he only stares and takes a deep breath, and you miss the time he couldn't be bothered to look at you, no matter how you tried to get his attention— to prove that you weren't scared of what he could do. "Stop being such a freak and leave."

He doesn't leave, though. He takes a step closer to you, and he starts talking. "My wand fell apart days ago— just rotted away like a dead twig, and I haven't bothered to get a new one. There isn't any point. No one can get into Diagon Alley anymore, and the wards around Hogwarts have all shattered. Everything that was once magical is either lost or broken."

"Get away from me!" you scream. The magic flashes everywhere in sight, and you try to save the image of the hallway in your mind, but it keeps slipping away, so you dig your fingernails into the panels of the wall and hold on as the wave of dizziness hits.

"You're such a pig, Dudley," Harry says. "I've been using my firebolt to sweep your crumbs off the kitchen floor. That's all I can do with it now, and my cauldron bottoms are so thin they're practically sieves."

You can't make any sense of Harry's words, and he seems closer than before. He seems all around you, but that's impossible. "Leave me alone," you say, trying to keep the shiver out of your voice as freezing winds hit you from every direction.

"Hedwig's forgetting how to deliver letters. My invisibility cloak disappeared, and the marauders' map is nothing more than a blank sheet of parchment."

"I-I don't know what you're talking about?"

He grabs your shoulder, and you don't know whether it's to hurt you or to keep you steady, but it doesn't do either, and you lean back against the wall, feeling like you're about to throw up. "I'm saying I'm not a freak," Harry whispers. "I would say I'm just like you are, but that's— that's not exactly true."

Your hands are shaking, now, and there's nothing you can do to stop them. Slowly, you let yourself slide down until you're sitting on the floor with your back still against the wall. "Get out of here!"

Harry moves his hand off your shoulder, but he doesn't leave. He speaks slowly, and his voice sounds like it's coming from very far away. "In the last few months there's only one person I know of who's been able to do any magic at all. There might only be one in the entire world."

"What do I care?" you ask. "Just one freak is a freak too many."

"No," he says, looking down at you strangely. "No, but it might be enough."

You don't know how long you stay sitting there, waiting for the world to come back into focus. The rest of the day blurs together. You remember brief moments— turning on your computer, eating a candy bar, catching your reflection in the bathroom mirror and barely recognizing yourself.

There is something you're fighting, something that no amount of punching or kicking can bring down. Even if you know you can never win against it and the struggling makes you tired and sick, the thought of giving in and truly being defeated is much worse than anything you can lose in the fight. But it's only a matter of time, really, until your endurance fails, as it always has and you're forced to face the certainties of your own weakness.

Harry said something about magic going away, and that has to be the stupidest thing you've ever heard. Maybe, even with his thick glasses he's to blind to see it running through the air, but he should at least be able to feel it. You take a deep breath, and you begin to fumble through the bottom drawer of your dresser, tossing aside piles of shirts too small for you but too good for Harry until your fingers brush the sides of a seemingly ordinary shoebox, but you know the things inside are anything but ordinary. You pick it up using both hands and carefully set it down on your bed before sitting down yourself.

Opening it is like taking the cap off a soda bottle you hear a faint crackle followed by a rush of cool air and instead of bubbles white sparks rise up towards the ceiling then flash and flicker out. Inside the box, everything seems just the same as it was when you put it there. The twigs are still warm when you touch them, and the feather is still soft and white, and the Weird Sisters are still dancing. You take out the jar of armadillo bile, and you watch as the liquid sloshes from side to side, shimmering somewhere between bright yellow and sickly green, and you look at the address on the sixth letter.

_Mr. H. Potter_

_Second Floor_

_Smallest bedroom_

_4 Privet Drive _

_Little Whinging _

_Surrey_

And then you touch it.

_Dudley Dursley_

_Second floor_

_Largest Bedroom_

_Broken bed_

_4 Privet Drive_

_Little Whinging _

_Surrey_

You draw your hand away, watching as it shifts back and then touch it again see if anything happens differently, but you're interrupted by the soft click of your door being opened and by Harry's surprised voice. "You're awake!"

"You?"

"What's that?" he asks taking a step closer and trying to look over your shoulder. "What are you doing?"

"Nothing!" you say scooping everything up in your arms and shoving it back into the shoebox. You wonder if he notices the rush of air as the lid shoots down, practically sealing itself on, but if he does it doesn't put him off nearly as much as the fact that you're awake. "Get out of my room!"

He looks at you curiously then sits down beside you on the bed, pressing his fingers into the mattress as if giving it a careful examination. "This is broken, you know?" He says with a half smile and pokes you in the side. "Wonder why that is."

"Don't touch me," you say, pushing him onto the floor.

He rolls his eyes as he gets up and looks very close to laughing. "Awww, Diddykins, did I hurt you?"

He ruffles your hair, and the magic snaps against your skin, and you think about your parents and how they're trapped because of it and how none of that would have happened if it weren't for Harry. And you punch him. You punch him harder than you ever punched anyone before. "Don't touch me!" you scream. "Don't talk to me! Don't ever come near me again!"

"Ow 'ell!" he shouts. You can't really make out what he meant to say, but you know he's mad, and you step back to admire your handiwork. His face is buried in his arms, but you're pretty sure you managed to break something, and if the blood that's dripping down onto his shirtsleeves is anything to go by, it probably hurts a lot.

"You shouldn't be here," you say, not knowing whether you mean he shouldn't be in your room or your house or that a person like him has no right to exist at all.

"Ow 'urts."

"Good."

"Ow."

"Listen," you say, grabbing him by the shoulder and trying to lead him out the door. "You'd better not get your freak blood all over my room."

He doesn't move. "Ow, ow, ow."

"Hey?" you ask, almost felling sorry for him. "You okay?"

"Is 'ou," he says, and as soon as the words leave his mouth, his skin warms beneath your fingers and then, slowly, becomes so hot it burns, and you pull your hand away and take a few steps back.

"W-what?"

"You, it's you." He looks up and wipes away the faint trickle of blood beneath his nose with the back of his hand. The rest of his face seems just as it was when he first walked in, right down to the look he's giving you, surprised and disdainful all at once, but you know that can't be possible, because you punched him as hard as you could, and just moments ago he could barely talk. "You," he repeats clearly, pushing you back into the wall. "You can do magic, you fat freak. You're doing it right now."

"I'm not!" you say, but your answer comes too fast for it to be convincing. "I-I can't."

"You know . . ." Harry says, and it's not a question. He rakes a hand through his hair and gives a nasty smile. "You know."

"That's a lie!" you shout. "I'm not— I'm not one of you! I'm nothing like you!" Your hands are clenched at your sides to keep them from shaking, but he manages to grab one, and somehow, he pulls it up to his face despite your struggling, and looks at it for a few moments and prods his fingers into the palm damp with your sweat and maybe some of his blood, and you stop trying to pull back.

He tilts his head to the side, and his smile fades. "No," he says, barley louder than a whisper. "No, you're not anything like me, Dudley." He shoves your hand roughly back towards you, and you press further into the wall, trying to regain your balance. "You're even worse." He walks calmly out into the hallway, half-smiling and laughing under his breath. The magic is everywhere, but it doesn't touch him.

You hear wing-beats outside your window and see sparks dancing through the air. The magic sends cold winds to freeze you, and it makes the air heavier as it tries to press you down onto the floor, but you shut your mouth tight, and you lock your knees to keep standing. You don't fall this time. You close your eyes, and you concentrate, and eventually, the winds die away, and the air gets lighter and easier to breathe. You stay with your back against the wall until you're ready to walk again, and you wonder how stupid Harry must be to think that you're the one doing the magic.

Thousands of years ago, there were far fewer witches and wizards than there are today, and it was said that because of their small numbers, the magic shared between them did not have to be stretched so thin— that they were much more powerful in their art than the witches and wizards of recent years.

Voldemort had claimed that when the mudbloods and halfbloods were wiped from the face of the earth, there would be more magic to be divided amongst the most deserving. He promised power, and no matter what Harry claimed when he stood before the DA or beside Dumbledore, he knew there was at least some truth to that promise.

But not all magic is wrapped up in the cycles and places of the living world. Some is kept inside, renewed by every heartbeat and strengthened by the bonds of family and the love of friends. Dumbledore had said that the greatest magic of all— stronger than the ancient magics stored in stones in the deep places of the earth and the magics of the air, which were able to move freely and pass through all things. It is older than any known ceremonies or rites and more powerful than enchantments cast with symbols or in words. This is what Harry puts his trust in, not Dudley. His cousin is stupid and selfish and weak in every way that really counts. He tells himself this, and he tells himself that after all Dudley put him through growing up, he doesn't owe him anything, now, not his respect, not his kindness and certainly not his life.

There's blood on Harry's hands, still, but hardly more than a smudge left on his face, now that he's wiped it all away. He squints up at the bathroom mirror, examining his reflection. Besides his hair, which has always been hopeless, and some red patches around his eyes, which can be easily explained away by lack of sleep, he looks completely normal.

He presses a finger to the side of his nose, finding it still sore to the touch, and he tells himself he's lucky nothing was broken, but that isn't true. He felt the bones snap and slide out of place, and there was blood everywhere, but for some reason, Dudley decided to undo it, even if he hadn't actually intended to. Harry didn't expect that, and he certainly didn't expect to tell Dudley everything. He just wanted to watch Dudley sleep, not out of any concern or affection, just to make sure that despite everything that was happening, Dudley kept going as he always had. If Harry didn't dislike him so much, he would have found Dudley's stubbornness rather spectacular.

It doesn't take Harry long to realize that the idea of actually being nice to Dudley is hopeless, especially since Dudley never saw it fit to be nice to anyone without being rewarded for his troubles. He can't see the point of it, really. Dudley still has nothing to hold against him. Even if he's doing magic, he has no real control over it. The least he can do, Harry decides, is try to see that Dudley doesn't have a heart-attack brought on by fear or too much chocolate and die before the summer is out, and otherwise avoid him as much as possible, but that doesn't go well either.

He spends his nights watching the Death Eaters as they traipse through the lawn with his head resting against the downstairs window, and when he can, he sneaks back into Dudley's room to watch him until he starts screaming and the movements of his sleep become more frantic. Then, Harry backs out slowly past the shadowed corners of his walls, shutting the door softly behind him.

Over the next few days they run into each other more often, and he can see the hate in Dudley's eyes, and wishes never to find out what that hate could do with enough force behind it. Harry can't tell whether he's lucky at all or if there's even such a thing as luck anymore, and he knows that playing his life against the breaking point of Dudley's self control can only result in a loss, but the chance in his favor is better than the one he would stand alone and magicless against the Death Eaters, so he takes it, and he hopes that Dudley's fear will keep him in check for just a while longer.


	4. 4

**Chapter 4**

You wake up, and Harry is in your room just standing at the end of the bed and looking at you, and he's looking at you so hard he doesn't even notice that you're looking back.

Your throat is dry, and his name leaves your lips broken. "Har-ry?"

His eyes meet yours, equally shocked, and his mouth moves without speaking.

"Harry!"

"Er—I—"

"This is my room!" you shout, struggling to sit up. "Get out! Get out, now!" But Harry stays, and he takes a few steps closer until he's standing right beside your bed. You can feel the magic building, and you can feel your heartbeat echoing in your ears and against your fingertips. You wonder if he can feel it too when he grabs your hand with both of his, and it's almost funny— his fingers are so small they can hardly wrap all the way around, and still, you can hardly move.

"Come with me," he whispers, eyes going wide beneath his glasses.

"No," you say trying to twist your way out of his grip. "No. I don't want to."

"I don't care," he hisses, but it doesn't matter if Harry cares, because you're not going to move and he isn't strong enough to make you. His hands leave, but before you have a chance push him away, one of them shoots up to cover your mouth. "Stay quiet," he whispers before slowly moving away. "You have to stay quiet."

Harry looks wild in the dark. Even in daylight he never looked normal, but in the colorless nighttime world of your room, he seems almost dangerous— smaller, faster, less predictable. It's hard to tell where he is. As the magic flashes through your vision, he appears blurred around the edges, as if he's made of shadows, and it doesn't help that you never liked the dark. His patchy hair is blowing about, as if it's taken on a life of its own. His eyes are darting erratically from one corner of your room to the other, and his odd scar is a black stain across his forehead.

He shoves a hand into the pocket of his jeans and searches for a few moments before pulling out a small glass top and setting it on your nightstand. Then, seconds after his hand moves away, it wobbles up from its side and starts to spin. "So," you say, pulling your blankets up over your chest and finding they do nothing to hold off the cold winds. "Batteries, so what? My remote control airplane can—"

"Wait," Harry says, taking a few steps back, and you watch as the top spins faster and faster. You hear the soft, grinding whistle of glass drilling through wood, and soon wisps of grey smoke are rising from your nightstand.

"What is that!" you ask, not really wanting an answer. "Stop it! Make it stop!"

He looks to you for the first time since putting the top down and smiles. "Be quiet."

"You-you said you couldn't."

"I'm not," he whispers, grabbing the top with one hand and your arm with the other. "Come with me."

"Get off!" you yell, but he only tightens his hold on you.

"You have to be quiet."

"Fine," you say. "This better not take long."

He nods once, but he doesn't let go of your arm, and he doesn't step back to give you room to get up. Then he starts pulling hard in awkward, jerky motions, as if he's trying to rip your arm out of its socket rather than help you stand.

You push him away and manage to clamber out of bed on your own. Silently, he leads you out into the hallway and down the stairs, and you stumble over each others feet in the dark, satisfied that you're hurting him a lot more than he's hurting you. "Don't go freaking out," he says when you reach the lounge. You're about to flop down onto the sofa, but he gives your arm another rough tug and pulls you over to the window and slides the curtains back. "Look."

It takes a few moments for your eyes to adjust— to ascribe form to the shadows and the movement of dark things against the dark sky, and at first you think it's some horrible sort of animal— one huge black mass moving towards the house, but then, it breaks apart into dozens of separate pieces, and for a second, you wonder if it could be the things from the alleyway— the Dementors, but it's not that cold, not yet. Then, the streetlight overhead flickers just a bit brighter and you see the faces, white faces with cavernous black eyes and gaping angry mouths— not real faces then— masks.

"Are— are they people?" you ask, and Harry gives you that look you hate. His lip curls upward slightly, and his head tilts to the side, and without words he manages to tell you he's better then you are in every possible way. But you don't pay attention to Harry's look for long, because your eyes are still growing used to the light and you notice something else out there on the lawn, something the people are holding in their hands and pulling from their pockets and pointing just off to the side of your window— guns.

You start to shiver, and Harry lets out a rough laugh that sounds more like a cough, but he doesn't look very happy. They will find you, you think. They will shoot, and you will die here with Harry or because of him, and really, there's not any difference. Your parents are trapped, and you can't fool yourself into thinking they'll be all right where they are, because the man who wrote the letter telling you they were lost was the same man who wrote Harry's letters, and you wonder if you could have just left them alone none of this would be happening.

You can hear Harry's owl calling from upstairs and flapping its wings against the bars of its cage. "M-make it stop," you whisper, but he only gives you that look again. "MAKE IT STOP! YOU HAVE TO MAKE IT STOP!" And you don't know whether you're talking about the owl or the magic or the people outside, but you think it could be all of that, all of what's been happening since you got the letter about your parents. You want so badly for things to be normal again.

"Shhhh," Harry hisses. "I can't do anything. I told you that."

"Oh . . ."

"Shhhh," he repeats, grabbing your shoulder and trying to stop your shaking. "It's okay they're here every night."

"W-what? That's impossible. I would have—"

"You don't notice anything," he says. "The whole neighborhood could disappear overnight, and you wouldn't notice."

"B-but— Guns!"

"Oh?" Harry twists his neck around to look out the window and then turns back and nods. "Well, that's new."

"Do you th—think this is funny?" you ask, trying to summon up what anger you can from fear.

"No," he whispers. "Be quiet. They can't hurt us. I don't even think they can see the house. Listen."

The silence deepens between you, and the owl calms down and stops flapping about, and you begin to hear faint voices coming from outside.

"Here," one of them says. "It's got to be here."

"Two to the left, six to the right, and three across the way," answers a second.

"Then this is it?"

"Well, no."

You turn your head so you can see the particular two you had been hearing as they walk off your yard onto the sidewalk and then pivot around and walk directly back to your front door.

"Here," the first one says. "It's got to be here."

"Two to the left, six to the right, and three across the way."

"Then this is it?"

You turn back to Harry. "How?"

"Shhh."

"How are you doing this? How are you keeping us hidden? You said you couldn't."

"I'm not," he says. "Now stay quiet. I don't know whether they can hear."

"But . . ."

"Let me see your hands," he says, and before you can sit on them or hide them behind your back, he grabs you by the wrists and twists so your palms are facing up. "Stay still," he whispers, taking the top out of his pocket and laying it on its side in your left hand. "Now watch."

Slowly, it turns itself over until it's upright on its tip and begins to spin.

"How?" you ask, cradling it between both your hands as it starts to get faster, barely touching the surface of your skin.

"Don't ask me," he says. "You're the one doing it."

"I-I'm not!" You shout, and as you do the top begins to light up. "I'm not! I'm not! I'm not!"

"Fine." Harry shrugs, leaning his head back against the wall and smiling. "Fine, you're not."

You try to close your hands and make fists around the top to stop its spinning, but it's too fast, and it tears at your skin. "I can't be."

Harry presses down on your shoulder and leans on you to scramble up off the floor. "Okay, whatever you say, Dudley. I'm going to bed."

In your hands the top is spinning so fast you can barely make out its shape. "H-how can you? We should— we should call the police— call someone."

"No," Harry says looking down at you. "We can't do anything to let them know we might really be here. We can't, understand?"

"No. I don't understand any of this. It doesn't make any sense at all"

He pushes onto your shoulder harder than before. "You can't tell anyone about them or it's all over."

"Hell," you say wincing and at the same time trying to make it seem like he's not really hurting you. "Just leave me alone, alright."

He lets go, and you let the top fall to the floor, where it continues to spin, hovering a few inches above the carpet. You rest your head back against the wall just as he had before, and close your eyes, and from the sharp screech of glass slicing through air, you can tell the top is spinning faster.

It's a few minutes before you hear Harry turn around and walk back upstairs.

Harry had wanted to scare Dudley, and he knew it wouldn't be hard. Dudley was already scared of something, but this wasn't just about getting back at him for all the bruised arms and broken glasses that came with schoolyard fights. He wanted to startle and shock and shake him out of the safe little world he built around himself, and show him what was really out there, not just out there. He wanted Dudley to realize what was going on inside too, what magic he was doing without even realizing it. He didn't want to terrify him necessarily, but when he finds him crouched on the floor shivering with his knees clutched to his chest, he can't help but smile. "Sleep well?"

"Shut up," Dudley growls. "Be quiet."

"What? What are you—"

"Stop talking," he says grabbing Harry by the waist and pulling him onto the floor. "We don't know if they can hear us, remember?"

"Yeah but—"

"It stopped."

"What?" Harry asks quietly, feeling lost. "What are you talking about?"

"This thing," Dudley says, pointing to the sneakoscope. "When the sun came up it stopped spinning." When he speaks next, Harry can hardly make out the words through his sputtering. "The—the m-stuff that was m-making it spin was what k-kept them out and it's stopped now. D-don't you see?" He manages to pick up the sneakoscope in one badly shaking hand and shove it under Harry's nose. "It's stopped."

"That's alright," Harry says slowly.

"W-why did it stop?"

"It only does that if people who shouldn't be trusted are about. It stopped when they went away. They tend to leave when it gets light out— you know, daytime."

Dudley nods and tentatively peeks out the window. Then, nodding again, he takes the sneakoscope between his thumb and index finger and spins it across the floor like a top, but it doesn't slow after a few moments like a normal top would. It spins faster, impossibly fast until it starts rising a few inches from the carpet.

"What are you doing?" Harry asks.

"I don't trust you," Dudley snarls, and Harry notices he's not shivering so much anymore.

"Stop it." Harry angrily bats the sneakoscope out of the air with the palm of his hand and watches as it rolls across the floor, and stops with a soft, hollow thunk when it hits the wall. "Stop being ridiculous. I'm nothing like them."

"You're all freaks!"

"Really?" He walks over and picks the sneakoscope up off the floor. "Lets just see how much I can make it twirl."

"Sod you," Dudley says, pushing him out of the way as he stumbles to his feet. "I'm going to get breakfast."

Out of long-forgotten habit Harry follows Dudley into the kitchen and pours him a bowl of cornflakes before fixing his own. He doesn't know whether to be relieved or annoyed when he doesn't notice.

"So-uh who are they?" Dudley asks, looking oddly thoughtful.

"Death Eaters." Harry says. "They are—we're Voldemort's servants. Voldemort was—"

"I know who he was," Dudley snaps.

Harry can feel his eyes widening in shock. "You do?"

"Yeah," Dudley says. "Yeah, the Dark Lord, an evil wizard who sought to take all the world under his power. You brought an end to him." He stops to take a deep breath and his lips twist somewhere between a smile and a sneer. "Am I right?"

"How do you know all that?"

"Read it somewhere," he says and shrugs to make it look like he hasn't started shivering again. "Why are his ruddy servants in my lawn every night?"

"Well," Harry says, running a finger over the handle of his spoon. "I guess they want to get even with me because I killed him and because of everything that happened after, not being able to do magic and all." He drops the spoon and closes his eyes so he doesn't have to look at Dudley anymore. "There were battles between us and them. There was a whole war, even if you never heard about it on the news, even if you never cared enough to bother watching the news. It was about power and bloodlines, but it was also personal. It was also about people hating you enough to kill you— to enjoy watching you die. They're mad, partly at me, partly at themselves, partly because people they knew are dead or hurt—"

"Or trapped," Dudley whispers.

"What?" Harry's eyes snap open to take in the unreadable expression on Dudley's face for just a second before he turns questioning again.

"But they can't get in?" he asks. "You told me they can't get in."

"No," Harry says, hoping it's true. "No, they can't."

"So if I kicked you out, you'd probably die, right? They'd probably kill you?"

Harry's tired, as if he's the one who spent the whole night shuddering on the floor. His throat is raw, and it almost huts to keep his eyes opened. "Yeah, probably."

Dudley nods and takes a deep breath. "Oh," he says, and Harry waits, but he doesn't say anything more than that.

The silence grows thick between them, and the air becomes thicker still, but even as Dudley sits quietly across from him without moving, Harry can see goose-bumps rising on the skin of his arms and his hair being ruffled by some unfelt breeze. His large hands clutch the table, as if it's all he has left to hold onto, and he starts to shiver again, but this time, something's different. This time, he shakes only for a second before swallowing hard and closing his eyes, and Harry watches as his knuckles change from their normal pink to bone-white.

Through the window behind Dudley, Harry can see out into the street, and he watches as the streetlamps start flickering on one by one. "Hey," he says, tentatively prodding Dudley in the arm with his spoon. "Snap out of it."

"What?" Dudley asks, looking too confused to be angry. "What are you on about?"

"It's breakfast time," Harry says, "Normally you start to eat now."

"Oh right."

"And normally you don't stop until just a bit before midnight," Harry adds in a quieter voice.

Dudley glares, but then notices his place set in front of him, which quickly draws his attention away from Harry. "What is this stuff?" he asks, pointing to the cornflakes.

"Cereal," Harry says rolling his eyes and giving a relieved sigh. "And that thing it's in is called a bowl."

"I know that,"

"Well, I just forgot how smart you are," Harry says with a smile. "Your parents must be so proud." As soon as the words leave his mouth, he knows he's made a mistake. "I— Uh— I. . ."

Dudley growls slightly and clenches his teeth. "I meant why is it in front of me?"

"It's food. You eat it."

"Shut your face," Dudley says, and when he stands, Harry's sure he's about to stomp back up to his bedroom, but instead he waddles over to the refrigerator and takes out a large bottle of chocolate syrup and proceeds to pour its entire contents all over his breakfast. After eating a few spoonfuls and managing to smear large drops of chocolate down the front of his shirt, he looks back up at Harry. "It's alright, I guess."

Harry makes a few exaggerated gagging noises, but before he can tell Dudley that he's going to make himself sick, there's a sharp tug on his hair. On instinct, he shakes his head back and forth fast, and after a few seconds, Pig drops to the table with a letter tied to his leg and a large clump of Harry's hair in his beak. Across from him Dudley's shoulders start to shake. "It's okay," he says softly. "It's just a regular owl—no magic to him. He convinced my godfather to let it take a letter to me once, and now my friend uses him— nothing to be scared of."

But when Harry looks up after untying, Dudley isn't shivering— he's laughing. "You-you," he stammers. "It was pecking at your head, and then you started twitching all about. You should have seen your face!" He slaps the table with the palm of his hand and tips so far back in his chair that he nearly falls over. He doesn't seem to notice Pig hopping across the table to examine him. "And— and your hair's such a mess wild animals are trying to makes nests in it."

"Shut up," Harry mutters.

Dudley somehow squeezes himself out of the chair again without breaking it. "Fine, but that was hilarious." He grabs a few handfuls of candy from one of the cabinets and shoves them in his pockets. "You totally freaked out."

Harry raises his eyebrows questioningly, before opening the letter. "Something you've never done, I'm sure." He looks down at Ron's jumbled handwriting and starts reading, ignoring the display Dudley puts on trying to fit as many chocolates as possible into his mouth.

_Dear Harry,_

_Some reply you sent, only two sentences, and you had to go and tell me I was right about things. Do you have any idea how much trouble a bloke can get into if he starts to think he might really know what he's talking about? I don't know anything, Harry. Just this morning I nearly cut off my own hand with an electric can opener, and when I told Hermione that she should warn people about the bloody thing she told me to grow up and stop being such a child. The problem is I don't know when I'm going to grow up. I thought I would get a job after school and that would be the start of it, but it doesn't look like that's going to happen now. Percy was always grown up, and I always knew the twins never would be, but I'm somewhere in between, and I haven't got it all figured out yet. _

_I think you've been rubbing off on me, Harry, even if you're not here. I can't sit still and do nothing, but when I try to help I just end of getting in the way. Neville is great at this stuff— a real natural. He was the one who managed to fix the can opener after I broke it, and the Grangers love what he's done with their garden. He figures it's because he never really had that much magic to begin with and was probably better suited for being a muggle all along, which I think is complete rubbish, and Ginny agreed to try and beat some sense into him. He's not the one I'm worried about, though._

_Hermione says she feels useless without magic, which is bloody ridiculous because she knows everything there is to know about muggle things. I'm the one who doesn't have a clue how anything works here, but she's upset— really upset, and everything I say just makes it worse. I'm trying to take care of her, but I can't talk about it like that, and you have to promise not to tell her I even wrote it. I'm the one who always needed taking care of. It's a lucky thing I was friends with her and with you or I would have never made it through school alive, and I always had my mum and dad and my brothers there if I needed anything, even Ginny helped out after what went on at the ministry until I got my brain working right again. I feel like I owe so much to so many people, and there's no way I'll ever be able to pay it all back. _

_Sorry to lay this all on you. You know I'm not good at this sort of thing. I just wanted to make sure that you're still there, and I wanted you to know that I'm still here and that you're not going to be able to get rid of me just by ignoring a few letters. _

_Ron_

He carefully folds the letter and puts it in his pocket before swallowing hard. Ron isn't the only one who owes people things, and having been shortchanged so often, he doesn't have any clue what he's owed. Harry knows he's only alive because all of his friends and teachers protected him when they needed to most— Hermione, Ron, Dumbledore, professor McGonagall, Remus Lupin, even Snape, and then there are the others— Sirius and his parents— the ones he'll never be able to thank, and even if he could, nothing would ever be enough.

He rakes a hand through his hair, and it lingers over the bare patch on the back of his head. He sighs. None of them are here. They're scattered across the country hiding away, waiting for things to get better and hoping they really will someday. Here, there is only Dudley, sitting across from him, stuffing his face with candy, slurping chocolate milk from the bottom of his bowl, and somehow, impossibly doing magic and shielding the house from whatever monsters find their way to the doorstep and keeping him safe.

Harry waits, and when Dudley finally raises his eyes to meet his, he doesn't seem at all afraid.


	5. 5

**Chapter 5**

When Harry kisses you, you try not to move. You don't want him to know that no one ever has before. Then you sort of kiss back just to show that you know what you're doing. You think about trying to pull away from him, but his hands are pressed hard against both sides of your face, and your head is too warm and dizzy to think about moving. It's easier this way, you decide, trying not to think that Harry's tongue really is in your mouth. It's easier to let him do what he wants as long as he's not talking about doing impossible things and claiming that you're a freak like him.

Even before, when you couldn't feel the magic as strongly as you do now, you could sense it, and it had always covered Harry completely like a second skin, but it doesn't touch him now. It can't. And when you're this close to each other it seems to have trouble finding you or at least fades for a few moments. It's funny, you think, almost laughing and almost feeling sick, you're being kissed by Harry, and you feel more like yourself than you have in a very long time.

"I don't know what to expect from you, do I?" Harry asks, taking a step back, and you can't imagine what he means by it.

"I don't know what you're talking about," you say.

"Never mind," he mutters, shrugging, as if nothing just happened. "Did you have to make such a mess? There's chocolate all over my shirt now."

You laugh and snort a bit without meaning to. "Your fault there," you say, "and it's really my shirt anyway."

Harry glares, but it doesn't look very threatening with his glasses cocked to the side. "Not since you were ten, it hasn't been."

"Well it was, and I could make you give it back to me right now if I wanted to." Harry raises his eyebrows, and you can feel your face getting warmer. "S-shut up. Just get out of here." Harry rolls his eyes and walks away before you realize that he hasn't cleaned the kitchen yet, and the small owl hops across the table and blinks up at you. "You didn't see anything," you whisper to it, and it seems to nod conspiratorially once before flying out the window.

You fall back into your chair, and your head swims with thoughts of black robes against the night sky and being cold in a way that makes you sure you'll never be warm again and that maybe here are worse things than Harry to be kissed by. You give a brief shudder that has nothing to do with the winds or the magic swirling around you and decide to pretend that you never let yourself think that.

This time Harry and Dudley do manage to avoid each other, or at least get out of each other's way as fast as they can when they pass in the hallway, as if sharing the same air for too long will make them start kissing again. Harry hasn't seen Dudley for days and would be wondering if he's dead if it weren't for the constant sounds of videogame spaceships exploding that come from his room.

The problem starts itself again when Dudley wanders into the kitchen without seeing Harry there, and Harry knows that if he wants to keep things going as they had been he's going to have to be the one to leave, but he's reading a letter from Hermione and he'll be damned if he's going to get up before finishing it.

"Hey," Dudley says awkwardly.

Harry blinks up at him before answering. "Hey."

"Letter."

"Yeah?"

"What's it about then?"

"Ley lines," he says. "Apparently, no one can see them anymore, and even some muggles used to be able to."

"Oh." Dudley stands in front of him, scuffing his shoes across the tile floor and looking completely out of place.

Harry scoops some oatmeal from a pot beside him to a china bowl and slides it across the table to Dudley. "Here," he says and stifles a laugh as Dudley stares, at it as if it's the most horrible thing he's ever seen.

Dudley sits down, wrinkling his nose. "You expect me to eat this?"

"If you want."

He shoves a rather large spoonful into his mouth and shows Harry it's possible for him to look even more disgusted than he already had. "This stuff is awful," He says. "It's Rubbish. You'd have to try hard to make something taste this bad."

"Shut up," Harry says, folding the letter and putting it in his pocket.

Dudley looks him over carefully, and when he speaks next something in his voice has changed, become less steady and strangely wistful. "It was my birthday three weeks ago," he says poking his spoon into the oatmeal. "It was my birthday, and I didn't get anything at all."

"I was rather busy," Harry says. "I didn't even know we exchanged gifts, actually. Do we?"

Dudley flinches almost imperceptibly. "They gave you things."

"Yeah," Harry says, "dog biscuits and Uncle Vernon's old socks and once a half pack of stale chewing gum.

"B-but they—"

"They gave me things alright," Harry snarls, and he can feel anger bubbling up from somewhere deep inside him. It's not anger at Dudley or his parents. They're not worth hating, really. Petty and selfish and weak— it isn't as if they ever had potential to be anything better than themselves, but Harry knows he's nothing like them. He saved a world, and now he can't even figure out a way to make out the front door safely. He's only angry with them because it's their front door he's trapped behind.

"I know they—"

"They gave me chores to do since I could walk," he says, cutting Dudley off again, "and they gave me bad eyesight from never having any proper light to see by. They gave me nightmares and bars on my window and lectures about how I should never tell anyone on the streets that we were actually related, and they gave me bruises, but those came mostly from you, Dudley. "

"Shut your face!" Dudley shouts, pounding his fist onto the table.

"Fine!" Harry screams back at him. "Just keep thinking whatever you want! That's what you'll do anyway!"

Dudley stands up and his chair topples over behind him. "I said shut your stupid freak face!"

The lights in the room get so bright that Harry has to squint to see Dudley as anything more than a large pink blur, backed by a wall of shining white. "Listen," he says, calming down slightly. "It doesn't matter. It's not forever. You know that, right?"

"You won't be here forever," is all Dudley says, and for a second, his eyes don't look so dull anymore. Harry feels an odd pressure building in the back of his head, and he realizes that Dudley knows he's lying.

"No, I definitely won't," he says, deciding to give what truth he can.

"Good." Dudley narrows his eyes slightly before turning back to his oatmeal. "It'll be better when you're gone. I don't expect this place is much compared to that castle you're used to staying at, and you can get back to doing all of your freak things— telling fortunes and wearing your odd clothes and all."

"I will," Harry says, wondering vaguely how Dudley suddenly knows so much. "Trust me, I hate having to be here even more than you hate me having to be here."

"No," Dudley says. "That's not true at all."

"What?" Harry asks, knowing he's not lying this time. "Of course it is. I don't know what certain events led you to believe, but I don't like you, and I don't like being stuck here now anymore than I did when I had to keep to the cupboard."

Dudley pauses for a second, probably thinking that shoving Harry back in the cupboard under the stairs and locking him in might not be such a bad idea. "I meant that you don't have to be here."

"What? If I leave—"

"But you can," Dudley says. He's not angry, but he's not joking either. "You can leave whenever you want."

"I'd probably be killed."

Dudley shrugs, half laughing through a mouthful of oatmeal. He taps his spoon on his bowl sharply twice. "This stuff really is awful. It's rubbish."

"Yeah," Harry says, rubbing a hand across his forehead and swallowing the lump that rises in his throat. "You mentioned that."

Dudley waddles the few steps across the kitchen floor and starts poking through the refrigerator. "I think we might have a pudding in here."

"You are a pudding, Dudley," Harry says, taking a few spare sheets of paper from his pocket and trying not to think of anything particularly, but not thinking doesn't last long, and he starts to wonder how there would be a pudding still in the refrigerator if Aunt Petunia's been gone for months, and Dudley's been eating everything in sight for weeks. He wonders how there's any food left in the house when Dudley hadn't set foot outside since arriving back, and he only had twice to greet Hedwig on the lawn when it looked too tired to find a window on her own. Certainly, neither of them have done any shopping. They don't even have money, though, he suspects Dudley's well practiced, if not actually skilled, at shoplifting. He wonders how they still have electricity and how the telephone still works and how Dudley's remote control toys never run low on batteries even when he keeps them on for days at a time. He doesn't have to look far for the answer.

Dudley emerges from the refrigerator struggling to carry a huge glass bowl containing the pudding, which consists almost entirely of chocolate custard with a few pieces of unidentifiable fruit on top. "What did you just call me?" Dudley asks with his mouth already half full.

"You—You . . ."

"HHugh?"

"You!" Harry nearly shouts. "I mean— I knew some things, but all of this— You!"

"Shuup."

"You're doing mag—things right now, don't you see?"

"Mggnud."

"Yes you are," Harry says. "How else do you explain it?"

"Ou ar a reak."

Harry gives a frustrated sigh and leans back in his chair. Across from him, Dudley looks very much like he's about to forgo the hassle of a spoon and stick his head directly into the bowl so he can eat faster. He decides this might not be the best time to really talk about everything that's been happening and that there's nothing that really needs to be said anymore, because this isn't forever. It probably won't last very long at all, and there probably isn't any reason to waste energy thinking about it.

All the same, he writes a letter to Hermione about blood ties and advanced shielding spells and the Death Eaters that appear on the lawn every night, and he writes a letter to Ron about finding things in unlikely places and trying to figure out how the world really works and just how much of a lump Dudley is, and then, at the last minute, he decides to switch them.

Harry gets up to go see Hedwig, and Dudley stays at the table. Having finished with the pudding, he's moved on to a container of chocolate icing. "Try not to make too much of a mess, will you?" he says on his way out, but Dudley only grunts something inaudible back to him, and he doesn't particularly care to find out what. It's nice being able to walk around the whole house again without worrying where Dudley might turn up. After sending the letters off, he wanders aimlessly through the halls and guest rooms, looking over the still pictures of the Dursleys trapped beneath their perfect little frames.

That night, when the sky begins to darken, Dudley groggily shuffles up the stairs to his room, and Harry takes his familiar position beside the lounge window, and he waits. Slowly, the Death Eaters arrive on the sidewalk and huddle together, whispering. Then, one pulls something from his robe and a bright light start dancing through the air. Then another does the same, and another. Soon, there are moving searchlights and lanterns shining halfway down the street. He tells himself that he's safe and no small amount of light will make any difference, but he nearly jumps when he hears a voice coming from directly behind him. "Are you watching your freak friends again?"

"They're not my friends," Harry says, turning to look at Dudley. "They're trying to kill me."

"Probably think they'd be doing you a favor," he chuckles to himself. "I don't blame them."

"What are you doing up?"

"I feel sick," Dudley says, rubbing his face with a large pink hand. "I feel like I'm going to throw up."

Harry rolls his eyes and suppresses the urge to laugh. "I wonder why that is?"

"Probably from looking at you."

"Yeah," Harry says. "Yeah, that must be it— not the pudding or the biscuits or the ice cream or the fudge bars."

"Shut up," Dudley moans. "Listening to your voice is making it even worse."

"You still have chocolate in your hair, you know, and on your nose and on your shirt."

"Don't worry." Dudley smirks, and for a second, he looks like he's feeling much better. "I'll make sure not to get any on you this time."

The next few moments drag on as Harry and Dudley each practice their own expressions of vague disgust. Harry turns back to the window, but instead of watching the Death Eaters pacing, he studies the reflection of Dudley's face imprinted over the dark street and the moving lights. Dudley does look sick, though whether it's from eating too many sweets or from thinking of the kiss or from something else entirely, Harry can't tell. "They've discovered flashlights," he says more to test out his own voice than anything else. "I'm surprised it took them this long."

"They're stupid, you know." Dudley says. "You'd have to be a ruddy idiot not to follow an address."

"They can't see it because of . . . magic. I told you that."

"Oh, right," Dudley says, flopping down next to him.

"Yeah."

"But you're not doing it?"

"No. I can't. I already told you that."

"So, I guess you're just lucky then, lucky that they can't see you, I mean."

"I know," Harry says, starting to rub away a particularly annoying smear of chocolate on Dudley's cheek. "You're a complete slob, by the way."

Dudley jerks back into the wall when Harry touches him and pushes his hand away. "Hey! Get off!"

"Sorry there, Dud."

"Shut up!"

"Shhhh," Harry hisses, just like he did the first night he showed the Death Eaters to Dudley. "I don't know—"

"If they can hear, right— I remember." Dudley's voice shakes, but only slightly, and he leans his head back against the wall, looking exhausted. "Don't touch me again."

"I don't want to."

Dudley gets up leaning heavily on the windowsill, which creaks under his weight, before stumbling over to the sofa and falling asleep.

Harry watches.

When you wake up Harry's looking at you, really looking as if he hasn't seen you everyday for the past few weeks. He has some paper in his hands and the small owl's hopping around on the floor by his feet, but he doesn't seem to notice.

"Stop it," you say, turning over and half falling off the sofa, but he doesn't stop. He doesn't even look like he's heard you.

"I think you can do it, you know," he says quietly.

"What?"

He holds up the papers— the letters he gets from his friends delivered by that owl. "I haven't told them yet. They'll say I'm mad, but I really think you can do it."

"Do what?"

"Find your parents," he whispers.

"What!" You fall the rest of the way off the sofa, and Harry smiles.

"I think you can."

"H-how?"

He rakes a hand through his hair and shrugs. "I haven't got that part figured out, but we'll work on it."

"We will?"

"Yeah." He goes into the kitchen to make breakfast, and you turn on the television and try to make sense of what just happened— what Harry just said. The voices and music coming from television fade to a low hum that can barely be heard over the volume of your thoughts and the clattering of plates in the kitchen.

Harry wasn't lying— somehow, you can tell when he is. A sharp buzz in the back of your mind signals every one of his untruths, and they've been frequent over the past few weeks, but he just told you he thinks you can find your parents, and he meant it. You try to keep your hope in check, because you know he meant other things too— freak things about the men who walk through the lawn every night and the candies that jumped and the top that can keep spinning forever and about you— you doing things that can't be possible.

By the window, the little owl flaps around, but you don't pay it any attention. You've already conquered some of the magic— the flashing lights and the cold winds still follow you, but they're not as bad as they once were, or maybe they're just so familiar that you managed somehow to adapt to them, but that seems less likely.

You walk into the kitchen, and at your place, Harry put a bowl of some dry cereal you don't care to try, so you push it to the side and find a chocolate cream pie in the refrigerator that you decide will make a much better breakfast. Harry gives you an odd look for a moment and asks where you think it came from, as if he really didn't just see you take it out. Certainly, your mum must have made it for you before she left along with all the other treats. For a second you wonder how lucky it is that whenever you look in the refrigerator you can only find exactly what you want and that it hasn't come close to running out of the things you like best, no matter how long you've been here without anyone but Harry to cook for you. You don't stay thinking about it for very long, though. You don't think about anything for very long when there's pie in front of you.

Harry watches you eat, and he pretends he's going to be sick, and he tells you you're going to be sick, and he says you should still be sick from all you ate yesterday. You feel good, though— better than you have in a long time. You don't even complain when only halfway through eating Harry grabs you by the arm and says it's time to start.

It's like playing hide and seek with your eyes shut and your ears blocked up. Harry tells you that when you were little you always seemed able to find him when he was trying to avoid you and your friends. He says this shouldn't be any different, but he's lying.

He ties the blindfold over your eyes and puts a hand on your shoulder that you try to shrug off, and he tells you to breathe, so you hold your breath just to spite him. You can't do it at first. You can't hear him or feel him watching you, and you don't understand what it is he tells you to look for or why you can't use your eyes to find it.

Harry laughs when you fall up the stairs and stumble over the coffee table but he keeps it quiet, and he makes sure never to do it to your face and always says things like, 'good job, Dud' when you get close. You want to tell him not to bother, because he never bothered before, and it's not like things are any different between you now, but you already knew none of that could be the same if you stared something like this, and you already knew that Potter couldn't be trusted to tell the truth, despite the words that were carved into his hand when he came back from his freak school two years ago.

Still, there was one thing he believed that you want to believe too, and you save that in your mind— those exact words, and you whisper them to yourself every time you walk face-first into a wall or bruise your knees on table legs.

_I really think you can do it, you know, find your parents._

Dudley's getting it, now, learning how to find Harry no matter where he hides. He sits on the sofa in the lounge shoving biscuits in his mouth and calling out locations as Harry wanders around a floor above him. "Bathroom. Hallway. Your room. Hallway. My room. Hallway. My room again."

Harry flops down on down on Dudley's bed, and despite being broken, he finds it much more comfortable than his own— not that this comes as much of a surprise. "You'd better not be touching anything!" Dudley screams up to him and Harry laughs slightly to himself before getting up and walking over to the computer.

"I'm not. Where am I, now?"

"My room, still, and you'd better—"

"Where in your room?"

"Computer," Dudley says after a slight pause.

"Yeah." Harry climbs over the bed again to get to Dudley's dresser and examines it curiously. All the drawers except the bottom one are hanging open and overflowing with unfolded clothes. "Now?" he asks casually prying open the bottom drawer and shutting it when he only finds more unfolded shirts and a battered looking shoebox.

"Dresser," Dudley says before shouting, "GET OUT OF THERE!"

"Okay, I'm out! I'm out!" Harry calls back to him, rolling his eyes as all Dudley's electronic toys spark to life and his remote control airplane takes off and starts flying around the ceiling in wide circles. It's better than the time Harry accidentally went into Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia's room. Then, two upstairs lamps exploded and the birch tree in Ms. Figg's yard shot out of the ground like a rocket. Whether or not he has any control yet, Harry has to admit that Dudley really is getting it.

When Harry first realized what might be possible, he asked himself why he should be bothered to care, but he supposes it has something to do with what Ron said about not being able to sit back and do nothing. Dudley's just might save his parents and that's fine, Harry tells himself, because they love him and feed him and give him gifts, and he always has been selfish. Harry wonders if he should warn him what this could start— that you save one thing and you have to save another and another until saving things becomes a habit you can't break, but there's no point to it, really. He couldn't ever understand.

It would take something stronger than magic to make Dudley Dursley a hero.

Something in the room shifts. The remote control airplane lands gently on Dudley's desk and all the other toys go still and silent. Harry turns to see Dudley standing in the doorway breathing hard, and he wonders how he didn't hear him stomping up the stairs. "Don't touch anything," Dudley says, and Harry walks over to him and holds out his hands.

"I haven't."

"I don't believe you. You were on my bed, and you went in the bottom drawer."

"God job, Dud," Harry says, but he doesn't seem at all appeased, he doesn't even seem to have noticed Harry talking. There are small, brown crumbs around the corners of Dudley's mouth and down his shirtfront. Brushing them away is more of a reflex than anything else, and it doesn't seem as wrong as it should. Harry wonders why his hands haven't been pushed off Dudley's shoulders yet, but Dudley isn't paying him any attention. He's concentrating on something, chewing on his bottom lip and narrowing his eyes as if looking off in the distance behind Harry, but there is no distance to look into, only a plain white wall.

"I'm not doing magic," Dudley says finally in a small, unsteady voice. "I've been thinking about it, and I'm really not doing anything. It's just happening. It's not like in those books you have that give the words to make things move or disappear or change into other things. I'm not even saying any words."

"Not all spells need words," Harry says quietly. Dudley still doesn't look at him, and he still doesn't move his hands from Dudley's shoulders.

"But this isn't like the things you did."

"No, it's not."

"And I'm not a wizard. If I was I would have gone to that freak school."

"No, I guess you're not."

"So— so I—"

"You're doing magic," Harry says, and Dudley's head snaps around to look at him.

"But I can't be."

"But you are."

"I-I don't want to," Dudley stammers. "I don't want to be weird. I—"

Harry pulls Dudley forward by the shoulders and kisses him. He doesn't know what point he's trying to prove by doing it or if maybe he's doing it to prove there isn't any point at all. He almost laughs through Dudley's protests, and he pulls back so he can laugh fully when he realizes that Dudley tastes like chocolate, though not in any way that could be considered pleasant

"What are you doing!" Dudley says staring at him incredulously. "I said I don't want to be weird!"

Harry's laughter becomes thick and scratchy, and he's not sure if it's this or the kiss that leaves a bitter taste in his mouth. "Wow, you really believe that, don't you?" he asks, running a hand along what little there is of Dudley's neck. "You actually think it matters." He kisses Dudley again, rougher this time, and this time, Dudley's ready for it and pushes him away fast.

"Stop it, will you!"

"It doesn't," he hisses, pressing his fingers deep into the too-soft skin of Dudley's arms. "It doesn't matter . . . It doesn't mater what you want."

It's an intricate, sudden motion that sends Harry sprawling out of Dudley's room, one that he would have thought Dudley too slow and stupid to manage, but he doesn't really know what to think of Dudley anymore. Dudley somehow ducked out of his arms while simultaneously pushing him away and slamming the door shut behind him. "Leave me alone," Dudley shouts breathlessly from inside his room. "Just leave me alone."

"What!" Harry shouts back. "What about everything we were trying to do!"

"It's nothing! It's not happening! It can't be happening! Just because you think something is true doesn't mean it really is!"

"Stop it! You can't quit! That's not how it's done!"

"I don't care," Dudley says softer than before. "I don't care anymore. I just want this to stop."

Harry pounds his fists into the door, screaming. "Don't you dare. Don't you dare quit now." But Dudley doesn't say anything back. Harry waits for the door to open or for any sound to come from inside Dudley's room, but there's nothing, and minutes later, he's surprised to find himself still breathing at least as hard as Dudley had been, and he leans back against the wall until he feels steady enough to walk the length of hallway to his room and eat a few pieces of Honeyduke's best chocolate before collapsing into bed.


	6. 6

**Chapter 6**

_I really think you can do it, you know, find your parents._

You try to stop Harry's words from echoing in your mind, but that proves more difficult than it should. You tell yourself he's mad, and you tell yourself just because he thinks something doesn't mean it's true, and you tell yourself you were stupid to ever have believed him.

Messing about with Harry was fine for a bit. It was odd, of course, but no real damage was done. You know it can't keep going, though. Even Harry knows it's wrong, and you can't really be making the magic happen. It's twisting your mind around, and it's leading you to think you feel better and believe you're in control, but you know that can't really be possible. You're sure of it.

You remember the letters, no matter how you try to forget— the five that you read and the sixth that stays in the shoebox in your bottom drawer. In the past few weeks, Harry came close to seeing it two times. It's all that letter's fault, really. If you hadn't saved it you wouldn't have started looking for other things in Harry's room, and if you hadn't had them maybe the magic would have left you alone. You wish you'd thrown it away when you had the chance years ago. You can't now. You're sure the magic won't let you, but maybe you can give it back. Maybe you can give all of it back and that'll put things right again.

You start with the jar labeled armadillo bile and the page of newspaper with the moving picture of the band on it, and you put them in the trunk he keeps full of all his freak things between a funny looking pair of binoculars and a picture of his parents, who wave to you, looking slightly confused. Then you take the twigs into the kitchen and lay them on the floor beside Harry's broom. They twitch for a few moments then roll around on the floor before growing upwards and rooting themselves back onto the handle.

That night, while Harry is downstairs looking out the window, you sneak into his room again and slip the feather between the bars of the owl's cage. It doesn't squawk or jump or try to claw at your hand like it did when you took it. It just turns its head round and stares at you with its big yellow eyes, and you can't help but stare back. "It's yours," you whisper, feeling rather foolish and tilting your head down towards the feather. "I guess I shouldn't have taken it, huh?"

It flaps its wings a few times and pecks at the door of the cage.

"Stop it," you say. "I can't have him finding me in here again," but it doesn't stop hopping or kicking at the bars, and a few seconds later it starts to squawk. "Shhhhh. Stop it, owl." You find a few small pieces of candy on the floor and tentatively stick one into the cage. "Would you like some chocolate?"

It peers down at the unwrapped lump of chocolate and then turns its eyes up to you, giving you the same type of look Harry gives you when he's calling you names for a few seconds and then starts pecking at the door again.

"You want out?" you ask, only half aware of how you must sound talking to a ruddy bird, but it seems to nod back and then squawk just a bit more. The latch is tricky to undo, but your hands aren't shaking nearly as much as they had before, and the owl only pecks at your fingers twice before the door springs open and it zips out the window into the night sky. "You'd better come back," you call after it, doubting it will actually listen. If you could fly, you probably wouldn't want to come back to a place like this.

The next morning— the morning of the last day of July, you're woken up by sounds of the owl moving about in its cage, and you smile to yourself before turning over and falling back to sleep. You dream of stone passageways and thick paper and reading books like the ones Harry keeps hidden in his trunk and under the floorboards. When you get up, it takes a few seconds for you to recognize your own room. It feels too stuffy and small and close to the ground. You walk into the kitchen, which seems much too still, and find Harry sitting at the table, picking at a bowl of cereal. "I-I have something for you," you say.

He drops his spoon onto the table and looks up. "What?"

"Something that's yours." You brush your pocket with your hand to feel that the thick paper's still there. "Something that's m-magic."

Harry's eyes widen and he stands up from the table, still holding his bowl. "Why?"

"I'm trying to make it stop," you say, arms going stiff at your sides. "I thought if I gave it back . . . and maybe if I think about it hard enough I could—"

"Idiot!" Harry shouts at you taking a few steps closer. "You stupid, bloody idiot, you have no idea what you're dealing with here." He lets the bowl fall out of his hand, and it shatters against the floor.

You jump slightly from the sound. "I-I was just—"

"Just what?" he hisses, "just trying to get us both killed?"

"N-no."

"We'll that's what'll happen if the magic stops. I'm sure the Death Eaters would have a good time with you."

"I'm not a freak," you whisper, clenching your fists, and as a freezing wind tears through the air, you're surprised to find your voice getting stronger. "I am normal! I will not be a freak!"

Harry tilts his head to the side and narrows his eyes, and you stare down at the floor so you don't have to see the way he looks at you. "You liked it."

"What? I don't know what you're talking about."

"Yes," he says, grabbing you by the chin and tilting your head up to look at him. "Yes I think you do. You're doing it. You know you are. It's not just happening around you. You're making it happen."

"I'm not!"

"You are," he says softly. "You're doing magic now, Dud, and you like it."

"I don't!"

He shakes his head back and forth slowly and moves his hand so your head shakes along with it. "You could find me halfway across the country with your eyes closed," he says, and his lips twitch upward slightly on one side. "You could do that, and you'd still keep saying you're normal. I don't believe you. You don't even believe yourself anymore."

"You— you're not normal. You kissed me."

"I bet you liked that too."

He tries to pull your face a bit closer but you manage to push his hand away. "Get off."

"No," he says, this time grabbing you by the arms with both hands.

"Get off," you breathe, and for a second, you wonder if he's heard you, but then he whispers back, "What if I don't?"

You try to flex your arms under his hands, but they hurt too much. He's making them hurt too much. "I-I'm stronger than you."

"Are you?" Harry asks, taking a small step forward so you're as close as you can possibly get without being pressed up against each other. "Are you really? You don't look very strong right now." He moves one of his hands away from your arm and presses it flat against your chest as if trying to find your heartbeat. "What are you so scared of? Don't want your mummy and daddy to know what you really are? I promise I won't tell." He kisses you as you try to pull away, an awkward, lopsided kiss that only gets the corner of your mouth and somehow makes you feel a lot more normal than you had before he started talking about magic. He gives a few angry huffs as you take a step back and feel yourself starting to smile.

"You're rubbish at this, aren't you?" you ask him, biting your lip to keep from laughing "I mean, that was terrible. What's the matter, no other freaks want to touch you? Are you too weird even for them?"

"What do you want here?" he asks expressionlessly, walking back and taking his usual seat at the table. "Besides to eat and get us both killed, I mean?"

"It'll be August tomorrow, you know," you say pulling the letter from your pocket. "I was just going to give this to you. It-it says your name on it— at least it did at first."

You slide it across the table and he touches it in the corner before you have a chance to let go. "Going through my things again?" he asks, looking down at the thick paper.

"No, I—"

"It doesn't matter," he says sharply, nodding in the direction of the letter. "It's not mine anymore."

Your eyes follow his to the address.

_Dudley Dursley_

_First floor_

_Kitchen_

_4 Privet Drive_

_Little Whinging _

_Surrey_

"It didn't change," you whisper. "I mean, it did change, but it didn't change to you."

"No," he says. "It won't do that. Not for me. Not anymore." He roughly pushes it back to you, wrinkling the paper.

"Oh—Uh . . . Oh."

"Oh?" he says, raising his eyebrows above the rims of his glasses. "Back to talking in grunts then, are you?"

"Shut up," you say, shoving the letter back in your pocket and walking out of the kitchen as fast as you can manage. It's not until you get back to your room and shut the door that you realize you forget to have breakfast.

_Ron, _Harry writes, hand shaking slightly. _You know how you said I was going mental?_

_I think you're right._

That's all Harry can think to say, so he signs his name and sends the letter off with Hedwig, who looks just a bit perkier than she did the day before.

He sits on he sofa and tries to get comfortable, but that proves impossible, and he looks at the few newspapers he can finds to see if there are hints of odd things happening anywhere else, but that proves futile, so he goes back to his room and shifts through his things and notices there's a picture of the weird sisters beside his omniculars that's somehow still moving.

He sleeps through the night, though not particularly well, waking up only occasionally to check that the Death Eaters are still wandering aimlessly through the lawn, and when morning comes, he stretches his legs and stumbles into the kitchen to make breakfast.

He's halfway through a crumpet when Dudley plops down across the table from him with a giant cup of hot coco and uses the remote to turn on the kitchen TV and fumbles with a package of biscuits. Harry can tell he's trying not to look at him, so he decides to make it easier and leave, but Dudley's voice stops him. "Uh— I—"

"What?" Harry asks without turning around. "What do you want?"

"D-do you really think I can do it?"

Harry doesn't need to ask what he's talking about. "Who knows?" he says. "Maybe." He turns around to face Dudley, who forces back a shiver. "But I don't think you will, and I don't think I'm going to bother with it anymore."

"What!" Dudley shouts, standing up from the table.

"There's no point, is there?" Harry asks.

Dudley's face is rapidly turning a brighter shade of pink. "What do you mean no point!"

"Well you won't. You won't do _freak things_, even if it means saving your family, will you?"

"I-I can't! I'm normal!" As he screams, the ceiling lights flash and flicker out, and as he slams his fist into the table the TV explodes and sends white sparks zipping around the room.

"Oh yes," Harry says, shaking the sparks from his hair and watching as they fizzle out on the floor below him. "Just look how normal you are."

Dudley slowly sits back down at the table and draws his arms in close to his chest. "I-I didn't do that."

The sparks are still raining all around them, and if Harry narrows his eyes, he can almost see the magic rolling off Dudley in waves. He wants to shout. He wants to lose control like Dudley does so easily and scream out all his anger and frustration. There's a whole world out there, he wants to say to Dudley, a world of people who are sick and lost and dying. There's a whole world that's faded beyond reach, and you're the only one left who stands a chance of bringing it back, but instead you stay holed up here watching TV and playing video games. He tries to focus his stare, but Dudley refuses to meet his eyes. Your parents are locked away, he thinks, and every night madmen come into your yard with clubs and knives and guns. You could stop them, if you tried. You could rescue your parents and bring the world back to normal again, but you won't even start. You won't even save one thing.

"Quit it," Dudley says through his teeth, still looking down at the table. "Quit watching me." And at that moment, Dudley's the most disgusting thing Harry's ever seen.

I hate you, he wants to shout, I hate you, and I would give everything I have to be you just for a few seconds, but Harry doesn't say it. He doesn't say anything, instead he grabs Dudley by the shoulders and pulls him up from his chair and kisses him hard.

"Get off," Dudley says pushing him away. "Don't touch me." There are white sparks spattered down the front of his shirt like biscuit crumbs and pale light flashing in his eyes.

"You don't understand, Harry says, poking him in the chest with his finger and watching as some of the sparks fall to the floor. "You don't understand anything."

"No!" Dudley yells, shoving Harry's hand away and taking a step back. "You're the one who doesn't understand. I'm not like you," he says, voice getting softer. "I will never be like you. Why don't you get that?"

Harry shakes his head. "No. You're wrong. You have to try harder." He doesn't know whether Dudley hears him or if he listened to anything he said before or if he remembers the times he really did get it to work, but over the next few days Harry keeps hiding, and try as he might, Dudley never finds him. After a week it gets too hard to hope anything will change, and he decides not to bother anymore.

When you were younger, storms terrified you, especially the storm you faced in the hut in the middle of the sea— something about the loud booms of thunder and the bright flashes of lightning and the water pouring from the sky that seemed like it would never stop until it swallowed you up. You could hardly ever sleep through it, so you would walk downstairs to the kitchen, and your mum would be there, just waiting for you, and she would hug you and sit you down at the table and give you tea and lemon cakes with chocolate icing.

This night, you tell yourself it's the memories, not the rain and winds that keep you awake as you walk down the stairs to the lounge and find Harry on the floor with his forehead pressed up against the window.

"Are they here again?" you ask, but he seems lost in the world of his own thoughts and slowly moves his hand up to the glass, showing no sign of having heard you. "Are they?" you repeat a bit louder.

"Every night," he says angrily without turning to look at you. "They're here every night. What don't you understand about that?"

"It's raining," you say, wondering if he's too stupid or strange to have noticed.

You see his sneer reflected in the glass of and watch as his fingers begin beating against the windowpane to match the rhythm of the raindrops. "Really, you think?"

"That's loony, I mean every night they come to the same house, and they can't even see it."

"That's the way they are." He brings his hand back to his side and turns to look at you, and you can't read the expression on his face "That's the way they always have been," he says with a sharp edge lurking beneath the softness of his words, "and people don't ever change, not really."

"They're stupid, you mean. They're stupid like all you bloody freaks," you say, and he glares at you like he wants to be properly angry but is too tired to manage it. "They're not ever going to give up, are they?"

"No. They want something. They won't stop until they have it."

"They want you."

"Maybe." He shrugs.

"They want you," you say to him, "and I-I'm about to go out there and tell them they can have you."

"No, you're not," he says, voice calm.

"I could."

"You won't."

You don't know if something of him is rubbing off onto you, but you don't feel up to arguing anymore, so you sit down beside him and turn your head to look out the window and watch the busy movements of drenched black robes, illuminated by the streetlights and the odd flash of lightning. "I guess that's what you have to do then," you say after a few minutes have passed, "to find something, I mean. You have to be willing to go out in the rain to get it."

"Not what I have to do," Harry says sharply, and you nod because you don't know what else to do.

"I still don't see what's so special about you that makes them keep coming here."

"Neither do I," Harry says, nodding his head in agreement, and then he starts touching your face, even though you're sure you don't have any chocolate on it, and then he runs a hand down the back of your neck, even though you try to shove him away, and then he kisses you— again.

This time something about it is different. Harry's hands are grabbing your hair and your arms and your back. You're both on the floor, and you're leaning against the wall and digging your fingernails into the plaster, trying to hold on as everything starts tipping upside-down.

By the time you and Harry finish kissing, he's somehow lying halfway on top of you, and you're somehow wearing his glasses. You blink and make out the blurry mess that must be his hair and give it a bit of a tug. "Get off."

"Stop that," he says, and tries to pull himself up using the windowsill, but he can't seem to find it enough to get a decent grip. There's not that much light coming from outside, and the rain is getting louder. On the third try, he pulls himself up enough for it to hurt when he falls back down and elbows you in the chest.

"Ouch!"

"Shhhh."

"Right," you breathe, and he looks up at you. At least, you think he's looking up at you. It's dark and neither of you can see very well. He presses into the spot he elbowed with the palm of his hand, and you wince. "Stop that."

His face is too much of a smudge for you to tell if he's actually smiling, but he sounds like he is. "I got you good, didn't I?"

"Yeah, now get off," you say, pushing him away as much as you can manage.

He starts feeling around on the floor and in his hair and on the front of his shirt. "You haven't seen my glasses, have you?"

"I'm wearing your ruddy glasses," you say, "and I can't see a thing through them. You must be completely blind."

He fumbles to take his glasses back, getting a few fingers tangled behind your ear in the process and kisses you before putting them on again and smiling. "When I'm doing this, it helps."

"It's not their fault, you know?" you say backing into the wall, and he backs away too so you aren't touching anymore. "My parent's, I mean. It's not their fault that you can't see. Your dad wore glasses."

"You saw pictures of him then?" he asks, looking at you without really turning his head, and you nod. "Stop going through my things, Dudley." He stretches his legs out in front of him and leans back against the wall, trying to get comfortable. "They're not yours. You shouldn't be—"

"Freak," you say, cutting him off, but you can't make it sound like a proper insult while half yawning. "They're yours because you're a freak." Harry's looking at you again, and you hate the way he looks at you, even when he's not trying to be insulting. "I was only looking for those fizzy candies, anyway, and I didn't find any chocolate flavored ones, so you can keep your stupid freak stuff. I don't want it."

"You know it's not forever, right?" He asks, giving you a light kick. "Real witches and wizards will be able to do magic again. Then I'll— I'll take care of it. It won't be forever."

"Nothing's forever," you say, trying to look back at him, "but you'd have to be stupider than I thought to think I would trust you." You don't say anything to him after that, and he doesn't say anything to you. You both move a few extra inches away from each other and rest your heads against the wall, listening to the rain and thunder until you start to fall asleep.

Harry doesn't sleep much that night, but Dudley does, and he watches. They're both still on the floor next to each other, and for the first few hours, Dudley jerks about and wakes up periodically and tells Harry to go away and stop being weird, but Harry doesn't listen. By the time the rain's stopped, Dudley has settled down and become very quiet, and Harry finds himself holding his hand a few inches above Dudley's mouth to make sure he's still breathing.

Shortly after sunrise Hedwig flies through the window with a piece of paper tied to her left claw, another letter from Ron.

_Dear Harry, _he reads.

_You sound like you're going a bit stir crazy, not that I blame you, really, but it's best not to let the little things get to you so much, at least that's what Charlie keeps telling me. I think He's just glad he doesn't have to cook for himself anymore now that he can't find any dragons to study._

_Things are good here, though. I set up a Quidditch pitch in the Granger's back yard. We had to lower the goals, of course, on account of not being able to fly anymore, and instead of bludgers Fred and George just throw tennis balls at people, and instead of a quaffle we use a football, and instead of a snitch we hide a galleon in the grass for the seekers to look for, so they have to crawl around, and tend to get stepped on a lot. It's really a great game, Harry. I got Hermione to play yesterday, even though she kept going on about how ridiculously childish it was, and she'll never admit to it, but I think she had fun. She's been feeling loads better lately, not so confused, which is good because seeing Hermione confused is terrifying, like it goes against nature or something. _

_You should come over, Harry, or at least call to let me know what's driving you mental. I'm sure it can't be as bad as listening to Percy blather on, and I can use a telephone now. Besides, it would be good to hear more than two sentences from you. _

_Ron_

Harry writes a letter back. It says:

_Dear Ron,_

_I've been snogging my fat, muggle cousin._

He decides not to send it, and leaves Dudley sleeping on the floor to go look for Hermione's phone number, but he can't find it anywhere in his trunk or under the floorboards.

He misses them— his friends and teachers, the people who he doesn't have to prove himself to, who understand him without having to say anything at all. Without the promise of being together at Hogwarts in a few short weeks, he misses them worse than ever.

Harry used to think it was a problem that once he got an idea in his head he couldn't push it away no matter how hard he tried, no matter how stupid or dangerous it seemed, but there's not so much danger now, at least not in daylight, and he doesn't have to worry about losing house points or getting detentions. So he packs a small bag, and he swipes the bit of money he finds scattered about in Dudley's room, and he promises himself he'll be back before dark.

He's stopped in the front hallway by Dudley's voice. "Hey."

"What?" Harry asks turning around to see Dudley's fat, pink face blank and obviously confused.

Dudley's small eyes narrow, and he takes a step towards Harry. "Where are you going?"

"None of your business,"

"Are you coming back?"

"Yes."

"When?" Dudley asks, pushing Harry to the side and moving past him to get between him and the door.

"I don't know," Harry says, becoming increasingly annoyed. "Get out of the way."

"No." Dudley shivers for a second and takes a deep breath. "I know where you're going?"

"Oh?"

"Yeah, you're going to see your freak friends, and you shouldn't. You shouldn't be allowed to."

"Why not?" Harry asks incredulously. "Why are you acting like this?" It's not like you want me here."

"They—I could lock the doors after you leave," Dudley says, straightening his shoulders. "I could let those guys in masks have their fun with you."

Harry looks at the door and searches for the best way past Dudley, who is very effectively taking up the entire width of the hallway. "How do you even know it's me that they want?"

"Who else would they be looking for?" Dudley asks with a hint of disgust, and Harry rolls his eyes.

"Never mind. Just move over so I can leave."

"You can't. You haven't washed the dishes yet or swept the floor."

"Do it yourself," Harry says shrugging and taking a step forward. "It's not my fault you've made such a mess."

"The laundry? You haven't washed clothes in over a week. My mum and dad would never let—"

"But they're not here, are they?" Harry snaps before Dudley can finish. "They can't make me do anything where they are, and you said I could leave whenever I'd like."

"I never said you could come back," Dudley growls. "I could lock the doors. I could, and I just might."

"You won't," Harry says, knowing it's true. As much as Dudley hates him, he won't shut him out, even if it's only so he has someone to clean up after him and bother when he gets bored with his toys and video games. Harry keeps walking, and Dudley moves to the side to let him through.

He watches Dudley wince as the screen door snaps shut behind him, and he smiles.


	7. 7

**Chapter 7**

Your hands are itching and feel like they might start to shake again if you can't keep them constantly moving. You sit on the sofa and flex your fingers, using the remote to flip through channels on the television. When you start to think you might not want to watch anything that's on, the television turns off, and the lamp beside you turns off, and the remote zips out of your hand and settles itself in the corner of the table between the coasters and the magazines just where your mum liked to keep it.

You get up faster than you thought you'd be able to and run up the stairs to your room, only to find your computer flashing on and off and your remote control airplane doing wild dives and twists around the ceiling. You slam the door shut without going inside and take off down the hall until your hands find the next door and you fling it open and seal yourself inside a room you haven't seen in months— your parents' room.

It's neat and clean and just the way they left it, like it's waiting for them to come back. You almost don't want to touch anything, as if that would be breaking some secret rule, but you're starting to feel cold, so you sit down carefully on their bed and pull the covers up and tell yourself the magic won't follow you here. You would have believed it if your eyes hadn't been drawn over to the side table by a sudden, strange movement, and you turn to stare at the picture there of you and your mum and dad, and from the picture, you stare back— really stare, and then you blink.

You grab the frame in your hands and shake it, whispering, "Stop it. Just stay still." But that only seems to rouse your picture-self faster, and soon he's waving at you and smiling, and soon your parents are waving too. "You have to stop," you tell them before slamming the picture face down on the table and running out of the room and down the stairs into the kitchen. You open the refrigerator and take out a very large slice of chocolate cake, and you stare at it, breathing hard.

There shouldn't be chocolate cake in the refrigerator. There shouldn't be any cakes or puddings or biscuits at all, because your mum wouldn't have been here to make them, and she wasn't expecting you to be here without her. Besides, you're still supposed to be on a diet, so if she made anything for you it would probably involve vegetables and taste like that foul stuff Harry tried to get you to eat.

You shove the cake back into the refrigerator and try not to think about it, but your hands are still itching, so you go over to the sink and pick up a sponge and start washing the dishes. You don't know why you're doing it, and you don't really know how to, but it's what your mum used to do, and it's about the farthest thing from magic that you can think of, and you promise yourself you'll make sure to eat something messy so they'll be something left for Harry to clean up later.

You're scrubbing a plate when the cold wind slams you in the back, nearly stealing your breath away, and you let the plate drop, but it doesn't fall. It hangs in the air, and the sponge keeps wiping in careful, circular motions, and then a cloth flies over and dives into the soapy water, and a bowl bobs across the sink to meet it.

You shut your eyes tight, and you can feel the magic all around you, but this time you don't try to shut it away or hide from it. You reach out with a part of your mind you never knew existed and try to shape it, to shift something small and change what it's doing. "Stop!" you shout, and to your surprise, the plate and the bowl crash back into the sink.

You trail your fingers over the tabletop and along the cabinets, trying to keep their twitching under some control. Most surfaces in the kitchen are surprisingly clean except for the floor, and as soon as you think someone should sweep it, Harry's broom flies into your hand. It doesn't feel like a broom should, at least, not a normal broom, but you don't have much experience with brooms so you can't really be sure. It's smooth and warm, and it feels like there's something alive coursing through the wood beneath your fingers, which have finally relaxed and gone still.

You sweep every inch of the house that needs sweeping at least twice, and all the while, you wonder whether you're doing it because you're scared of what the other magic could happen or if you're sweeping just because the broom fits so well in your hands. It seems to lead you through the house in a strange dance, and even though you can't be sure of the steps, your feet seem steadier than before, and you don't stumble.

You know the broom shouldn't be trusted. It's a freak thing, and no freak things should be trusted. It doesn't even make you feel normal like Harry did. It makes you feel weird and anxious, almost the same way you felt right before your boxing matches, except stronger than that, like you're expecting something big to happen, something that could change everything else.

You feel trapped in the house. You hadn't though about leaving it for as long as you've been back, but as soon as you saw Harry walk out the door, you wanted to get out too— to go better places than he could and have more fun than he would with his stupid freak friends.

You don't want to let him beat you, but what you want doesn't seem to matter so much anymore. If your mum and dad were here things would be different, better, the way they should have stayed all along. It's Harry's fault they're gone, not yours, no matter what he wants you to believe. So you take a deep breath, and you tell yourself you haven't conceded yet, and you go outside to sweep the front steps.

You're greeted by sunlight and the smell of grass and fresh, cool wind blowing in your face. When you shut the door behind you, magic starts flashing everywhere, like hundreds of tiny cameras, and for a second, you think it might be the most amazing thing you've ever seen, but seconds like that usually pass the quickest. "Stop it," you say, using your mind to send the wind in the opposite direction and calm the flashing until it fades completely.

The handle of the broom is getting warmer than it had been. You tighten your hands around it and try to sweep, but it starts moving on its own in patterns that you can't follow as easily, and it starts rising from the ground, taking you with it. You try to call out, but you don't have enough breath left in you to tell it to stop or even to shout for help.

You're hanging below it almost level with the roof of your house, and the magic starts flashing just like before, and the wind finds you again. You try to pull the broom down or to pull yourself up onto it, but you can't do either. Your arms are aching from the strain of having to hold yourself up, and just as your fingers are starting to slip, the broom darts away in a backwards loop flips around between your legs. You have only a second to steady yourself and adjust your grip around the handle before it shoots straight up into the sky

You scream.

Even with Dudley holding him up, Harry still manages to get to the bus station in time, and he's surprised that the ride to Hermione's neighborhood takes little more than an hour. The bus is empty and plain and not exactly comfortable. It certainly isn't the knight bus, but that's not such a bad thing, really, except when, mid-ride, he gets the inexplicable desire for some hot chocolate.

Her house is easy enough to find. As soon as he spots the oversized Chudley Cannons sign and a ten foot high stack of wire and metal engine part, he knows the Weasleys have left their mark. He walks around the brightly colored pinwheels and stoops to examine a few very strange lawn ornaments carved to look like real garden gnomes, not the cheerful muggle representations, and then his eyes meet a spectacular garden of flowers and ferns and fruit trees.

"Like the yard?" asks a voice from very close behind him, and he turns quickly to come face to face with Ron, who smiles and points towards the houses down the street. "I think the neighbors are starting to think we're all a bit wrong in the head. I think Hermione's starting to tell them that, actually."

"What?" Harry asks, still a bit dazed.

Ron puts his hands in his pockets and rocks back and forth on his heels. "That was a joke. Hermione's not telling people we're crazy . . . at least, I don't think she is."

"You've gotten taller," Harry says, realizing he has to tilt his head slightly further back to get a good look at Ron's face. "I didn't think that was possible."

"Impossible things happening, mate," Ron says nodding, "either that or you've just shrunk." He takes a hand out of his pocket and gives Harry a few rough pats on the back. "You okay there?"

"Yeah, I guess so." Harry shrugs and looks over at Hermione's house, which seems to exude that untouchable normalness that Number Four Privet Drive had before Dudley became anything but normal. "I thought I'd be surprising you."

Ron begins walking towards the back of the house, and Harry follows. "I was expecting you for a few days, actually. I didn't know when your owl would get back to you with the letter. I told her not to rush it. The muggle's been treating you decent?"

"No, I mean— sort of." Harry closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. "My aunt and uncle got stuck wherever they were hiding from Voldemort, so it's just me and my cousin at the house, and he's . . . well he's something."

"Hmmm." Ron gives him a look that seems to know more than it should and nods.

"Everything okay here?" Harry asks, trying to get off the subject of Dudley, who he wants to avoid thinking about for at least that day. "Your parents? Hermione? You had me worried there for a while."

"My parents have always been fine," Ron says slowly, still looking at him, "and Hermione's better, definitely back to being Hermione again. She says she's thinking about going to a muggle university, because there's still so much she doesn't know." He rolls his eyes, and Harry bights back a laugh. "You ask me she'll be bloody disappointed when she gets there and finds it's all a bunch of stuff she taught herself before even starting school."

"Ron," comes a voice from the side of the house. "Are you talking about m— Harry?" Harry spins backwards again and this time finds Hermione pulling him into a rough hug. "Harry, I can't believe you're here!"

"Well at least someone's surprised," Harry says, hugging her back.

"Don't know why," Ron mumbles, looking down at the ground and scuffing his feet awkwardly through the grass. "I told her you'd be showing up soon."

"Well, I'd be quite foolish if I were to believe everything you told me," Hermione says, turning her head back to Ron before giving Harry a kiss on his cheek. "He said he's been sending hints in his letters all summer to get you to come here, and I told him that was completely impossible." From the corner of his eye and through Hermione's hair, Harry sees Ron look up at him and wink. "I also told him that you wouldn't even understand his letters," Hermione continues. "Besides his idea of subtlety is '_Harry get over here now!_'"

"I'm right here, you know?" Ron snaps.

"Of course you are," Hermione says, finally releasing Harry. "Where else would you be?"

Harry watches her lay a hand on Ron's arm, and he watches Ron bristle from the touch. Ron looks back to him. "Hey, Harry, you fancy a game of Quidditch?"

Hermione's arm falls back to her side. "Oh his Quidditch," she says, rolling her eyes. "Harry, you really have to see this."

"He already told me about it, actually."

"Did he?" she asks. "Did it make any sense?"

Ron crosses his arms over his chest and glares at her. "I'm sure Harry will like it a lot more than being lectured on toasties."

"Toasters, Ron," Hermione corrects him, "and honestly, you almost suck your hand in one."

"You told me to take the bread out," Ron mutters darkly. "How am I supposed to know there was a bloody button?"

"So about that game of Quidditch?" Harry asks, trying to help ease the tension between them.

Hermione tucks a few wisps of hair behind her ear. "It's horrible," she says to Harry, smiling this time. "It's the most ridiculous thing you'll ever see."

Ron's face reddens, and he crosses his arms over his chest. "You seemed to be having a pretty good time last game we played. If you want you can just stay inside moping with you books and old essays, and me and Harry will—" Harry takes decisive action and punches Ron hard in the arm. "Ouch that is— er I—"

Hermione raises her eyebrows at them both. "You'll what?"

"Uh, I think it's up to you," Harry says, silently urging Ron not to open his mouth again, "whether we play or not, I mean."

"We can play," she says giving a sigh that sounds more amused than exasperated. "I'm sure everyone else will be up for another game."

"Great," Ron pipes in. "Harry can be seeker."

"I get to crawl around in the grass, then?" He asks, and Ron curiously pokes at the still bare patch in the back of his head until Harry slaps his hand away.

"Don't worry," He says. "You'll against be up against Neville, and he gets distracted whenever he sees an interesting clover."

"Great," Harry mutters, and Hermione starts to laugh.

An hour later, Harry finds himself on his hands and knees tossing aside dandelions and butter cups as he searches for the "snitch". The ground, he thinks, is a very different place than the sky when you're trying to find something small and golden, much dirtier and lacking the thrill of flight and the excitement of a head to head competition. For the seeker Ron's Quidditch isn't about speed or skill, but stubborn meticulousness and the ability to make yourself keep at it when you'd rather not be bothered at all and maybe, Harry thinks, just a bit about good luck. He's absently scanning the nearby grass and thinking of how much he misses his broomstick when he feels a hand on his shoulder.

"Ron was right about this," Hermione whispers from behind him.

He looks up at the streak of mud across her shirt and the red spot on her knee where she was hit with the football. "He was?"

"Well not about this version of Quidditch," She says waving a hand to indicate everyone in the yard. "I still think it's a completely pointless game, but I never liked the other kind nearly as much as you two did."

"I guess not."

She nods and sits down next to him. "He was right that we have to keep playing it, even if we can't fly anymore, even if all we can do is crawl around in the grass."

"Oh." Harry looks toward the action in the center of the yard where Ron's in front of the goal hula-hoops, keeping and shouting out orders to everyone else. They're listening, all of them, even his dad, even his older brothers, even the people on the opposing team, and when he's silent the all look back to him, expecting him to say something, or maybe just for reassurance. "When did this happen?" he mutters to himself.

"He thinks there's still magic around," she whispers. "He says we just can't use it now, but we'll be able to again later as soon as it gets stronger for enough to be released again. He has this whole crazy plan worked out, and it doesn't make any sense, but he believes it. He believes it so much everyone else is starting to believe it too. At first, I thought it was just an excuse so he wouldn't have to learn about anything muggle, but maybe . . ."

"There is still magic around." Harry says, smiling and brushing his grass-stained hands on the legs of his trousers.

"There could be." Her forehead wrinkles, and she bites her bottom lip. "I mean it is possible—"

"No. There is, really. You wouldn't believe me if it told you—"

"Oi!" George yells as a tennis ball zips between him and Hermione. "Break it up, you two. You're supposed to be on different teams."

"There is," he whispers, "and you should tell Ron that he's right."

She nods and pokes at his head just like Ron had earlier. "Would you like a hat?"

"What?"

"It's just that it really is quite noticeable," she says taking a step back and blushing. "I just thought . . ."

"No!" Harry shouts, and for a second, everyone in yard turns to look at him, but it doesn't last long, because there is another shout from over by the garden, where Neville waves a galleon above his head, yelling, "Found it!"

Harry smiles and let's himself collapse into the grass. Above him, Ron joins Hermione and whispers, "At least he isn't growing a ponytail."

"It's your fault," Harry mutters into the ground, but by then, even he's laughing, and he rolls over and lets them pull him up by the arms.

Inside, it seems Hermione's house is loosing a fight to keep at least some remnants of sensible normality amidst the piles of robes and stacks of cauldrons and ancient looking scrolls. He sits at a long table covered in schoolbooks and potion ingredients and eats a lunch that would make even Dudley jealous. Afterwards, he plays a round of chess with Ron, who keeps forgetting that the pieces won't move where he tells them, but still manages to win easily. Then they spread themselves out on the sofa, just like they had back in the tower at Hogwarts, and they talk until there's nothing left to say.

In the silence he looks at them, really looks, even though they're too busy looking at each other to notice. Ron has scars on his arms from when he was attacked by a brain in the department of mysteries, and Hermione has marks on her neck left by the enchanted wire that nearly choked her when they fought to keep St. Mungo's from being taken, and Harry has a lightning bolt on his forehead and words on his right hand and a thin line going up his ankle where it was broken. They're safe now, and they're happy. They don't have magic and they're happier than he's ever seen them. He smiles and thinks that he just might be happy too. He just might be happier than he ever was before.

Ginny and Neville went out looking for Trevor in the back garden, though Harry suspects they're doing something else, because Trevor is sitting safely in his terrarium. Fred and George are reading through catalogs of muggle jokes and arguing whether they should spend their money on fake vomit or itching powder, even Percy is beaming as he tells his mum about his trip to the post office.

Harry's watching Bill and Charlie playfully fighting over a newspaper and wondering if a ponytail is really that bad of an idea when he's pulled from his thoughts by two sharp knocks coming from the front door. The twins spring to their feet and Harry can hear laughter just barely stifling a low, angry growl.

"Is that—" Fred begins.

"Yes," says George.

"I do believe—"

"He's gotten bigger."

"Harry!" matching voices call in to him, followed by a decidedly angrier one yelling, "HARRY!"

Harry jumps up from the sofa, pushes Fred into the wall and runs out the door where he comes face to face with a wide-eyed, messy-haired Dudley, who looks at least twice as pink as usual. "You followed me!" he exclaims, pushing Dudley off the front landing. "I can't believe you."

Dudley stumbles, trying to regain his balance. "I didn't!" he says, but Harry's in no mood to listen.

"I tried to get away for one day, and you followed me." He hops off the landing and shoves Dudley backwards again. "What on earth are you doing here?"

"I didn't follow you," Dudley says, voice dropping to a whisper, and Harry knows he must be shaken by something, if only because he's letting Harry push him around so easily.

"You'd better explain what's going on soon or I'll set Fred and George on you again."

He takes a deep breath and stands just a bit straighter. "They can't hurt me, not now."

"Oh?"

Dudley grabs Harry by the arm and pulls him away from the door so they won't be seen by anyone inside. "I flew," he whispers, going an even deeper shade of pink. "I-I flew here."

"What!" Harry shouts, and Dudley clasps a meaty hand over his mouth to keep him silent.

"Shhhh," he hisses, slowly drawing his hand away. Then he takes a few steps to the garden and lifts Harry's firebolt from the nearby flower bushes. "I used your broom."

"Are you mad! Harry screams waving his arms so Dudley won't try to cover his mouth again. "You could have fallen off! Someone could have seen you! There are laws against just doing that!" Harry pauses to take a breath, and his mind centers itself on what could be the worst consequence of Dudley sitting on his broom. "You didn't break it, did you!"

"No," Dudley says, snorting incredulously.

"You even sound like a pig," Harry mutters, grabbing the broom away from Dudley and examining the handle for any cracks or fractures. "Are you sure?"

"Shut up."

Harry hesitates a second before shoving it back into Dudley's large, pink hands. "None of this makes any sense. You realize that, don't you? I mean, you flew, and now you're— how did you find me?"

Dudley shrugs. "I don't know. I just did."

"But—"

Dudley carefully runs a few fingers down the broom's handle and smiles to himself. "I just did."

"But . . ." Harry trails off as the realization dawns on him and feels himself beginning to smile back. "Oh."

"Yeah," Dudley says nodding and peering back at the decorations on the front lawn. "Besides, you freaks are pretty obvious."

There's an awkward few moments they share staring at each other before Harry manages to clear his throat. "Good job, Dud."

Dudley scowls back at him. "I should go," he says before roughly pressing something cool and metal into Harry's hands.

Harry looks down to see a small golden key attached to a Grundings keychain in the shape of a drill. "What's this?" he asks.

"It's to the front of the house," Dudley says, "so you can get in."

"Why?"

"Because, you were wrong. Because I am going to lock the doors." He takes a deep, shaky breath and then smiles. "Because you told me I wouldn't, but I'm going to anyway."

"Okay." Harry rolls his eyes and decides not to bother telling Dudley that it won't count as being locked out if he has a way to get in.

"You were wrong," Dudley repeats quietly, more to himself than to Harry.

"Fine, you already said that."

"I'm going back now," Dudley says, fingers twitching over the broom's handle.

"Yeah, then go."

"I will." His face contorts in look of intense concentration. On Dudley, the expression seems almost painful.

"You do remember how you got here, right?" Harry asks.

"Shut up," Dudley says, and something sparks in his eyes. In less than a second he's on Harry's broom and shooting up into the sky. He zips over the rooftops and around trees, doing upside down corkscrews and perfect imitations of the Worinski feint. At first, Harry thinks he has no control, going impossibly fast and impossibly high, but then he lowers himself, doing perfectly steady loops over the street and neighboring houses. "I guess you freaks got something right," he calls down to Harry. "This isn't so bad. I'll give you that."

"Show off!" Harry shouts up at him, but his voice are muffled and carried off on a cold wind. It doesn't really matter, though. By the time the words leave his mouth, Dudley's much too far above to hear anything.

"Don't worry," says a voice behind him. "He's not any better than you were." Harry turns to see Ron standing on the front landing with Hermione beside him. He's grinning and she looks like she's either laughing or about to cry.

"So this is how you knew?" she asks in an unsteady whisper. "Your cousin he's . . ."

"He's something," Harry says before she can finish.

Ron gives him that surprisingly perceptive look that isn't quite as surprising as it would have been once. "Oh definitely something," he says. "Be careful there, Harry."

"I can take care of myself."

Ron nods. "I don't doubt that."

"You were right," Hermione says, looking from Ron to Harry and back again. "You were right about everything."

Ron grins wider than before. "Not everything," he says with laughter in his voice. "You can't go telling a bloke something like that."

They stand with Harry looking up at the sky until Dudley is just a dot over the horizon, and his silhouette is diminished by the slowly falling sun.

"I have to go back," Harry whispers when Dudley's no longer in sight. "You know I don't really want to but—"

Before he can finish, Hermione hugs him, muttering things about how he was right and Ron was right and everything's gone backwards, and to his surprise, Ron keeps smiling.

"I have to—" Harry begins again, but Hermione interrupts him.

"It won't be forever," she says with a surety in her voice that he hasn't heard since they left school. "You know that, right? It won't be forever."

"Yeah," Harry says. "Yeah, I know."


	8. 8

**Chapter 8**

No one saw you flying over London or Bath or Wiltshire. Most of what you passed was countryside, but even if it wasn't, even if it was all cities filled with thousands people, you still don't think anyone would have noticed you.

It's an unusual feeling, being invisible when for so much of your life you did nothing but demand to be seen, but it's no more unusual than the feeling of actually flying. There's nothing in the world you had to compare it to, but you would give up your room and all your toys and games to go just a bit higher, just a bit faster. You don't need to give anything up, though. The broom will move where you want it to as soon as you think it— before you think it.

You almost don't want to go back. The flashing magic looks brilliant from above, and the cool wind started to feel perfect right around noon, when the heat of the day really began to settle in, but it's getting dark, now, and Harry will probably start wondering where you are or at least where his broom has gone, so you turn around, and you make one last stop to pick up a few things before returning home.

Harry's sitting by the window, and be jumps when you walk through the door. "What are you doing? Where have you been!"

"None of your business," you tell him and go into the kitchen to start putting things away.

Harry follows you. "What's that?" he asks as you set a loaf of bread in the cabinet.

"Food, you know, stuff to eat."

"What? How?"

"I stole it, alright."

"Stole it?" he asks, looking increasingly jumpy. "Well, that at least makes sense."

"Calm down," you say, but that only makes him more upset.

"Easy for you to tell me that," he snaps. "While you were out robbing the grocer, I was stuck here, and the Death Eaters —"

"Can't get in," you say. "You know that, right? Even if I'm not here the-the m-magic it's everywhere."

"Is it?" he asks, slumping down into a chair and resting his elbows on the table.

"Well, everywhere except on you."

"Oh."

Neither of you watch the men out on the lawn that night, but you can feel them there, and that's enough. Harry stays in the kitchen, and you get bored and flip through old newspapers until you fall asleep on the sofa.

You wake up early the next morning and sneak out with Harry's broom before he gets out of bed. Flying is easier this time, not so scary when you first shoot off the ground, and your sense of direction is improving. You begin to see distances differently, not bound by towns or roads or street signs. You go back home in a straight line instead of following the avenues to Privet Drive from overhead, and you do a few back-flips before making an easy landing on the doorstep. You put Harry's broom in the cupboard, and go in to the kitchen for breakfast.

You're almost finished eating when Harry shuffles in groggily and flops down into a chair. "Where've you been?" he asks blinking at you.

You drop your spoon and quickly run a hand through your hair. "Me? Uh-Nowhere."

His eyes narrow. "What are you smiling about?"

"Nothing. I'm not smiling." Below you, your spoon rises up and starts stirring the cereal, but you don't pay it any attention.

He shrugs, and you hope he'll leave you alone, but instead he leans over your placemat to get a closer look. "Cornflakes?"

"Yeah," you say, "and that thing they're in is called a bowl."

He raises his eyebrows. "Doesn't food usually need to be smothered in hot fudge before you touch it?"

"Shut up."

"You actually went out to buy—" he begins then pauses and smiles to himself. "You went out to steal cereal?"

From beside you the milk bottle floats up and starts pouring its contents into your bowl. "It's better than that stuff you made, anyway."

"You did!" He says slapping the table and looking entirely too amused.

"Well I had to get something, didn't I? The stuff in the refrigerator— I don't think it's real."

"Oh, It's definitely real," he says, giving you an odd look. "You've been eating nothing but for the past moth."

Your hands are starting to itch again, and you want to go out and fly or make something move. You don't want to be here any longer, and you don't want Harry here with you, not when he's looking at you and trying to make you feel stupid. "Yes but— but I don't think it should really be there. I don't think my mum put it there."

He smiles but only halfway, and he doesn't look very happy. "It took you this long to figure that out? I told you weeks ago that you were doing it."

"Me?" you ask, and Harry gives a sharp, scratchy laugh.

"Who else?" He stands from the table, rolling his eyes at you.

"Well the refrigerator might have—"

"Just how slow are you? It's a dumb muggle refrigerator bought by your dumb muggle parents. Why on earth would it be making you chocolate pies? It's yours, Dudley. The magic that's all over everything is all yours."

You want to punch him or kick him or bang him over his stupid head with something hard, but Harry's weird, a freak, and that's not the way to really hurt him. "Except you," you say, twisting a napkin between your hands to keep them steady. "Don't forget that. The magic, it's all over everything, except you."

"Well it is yours," he hisses. "It's here because of something you're doing, even if you're not meaning for it to, it is, and just look what happens when you want something from it."

"What?" You ask with a shrug.

"Your spoon!" he nearly shouts, "and the milk bottle that was bobbing through the air a few seconds ago! You're doing it!"

"Oh that." You look down at your spoon as it keeps stirring the cereal, and you reach out to the magic and hold it still until it relaxes and the spoon drops back down into your bowl. "Well I know I can do some things, but . . . mine?

"It's yours." Harry says, looking increasingly angry. You think he means for you to be angry too, but you're not sure why. You've always liked having things Harry didn't.

"Good," you say, and Harry's glare shifts back into his usual look of confusion, which you don't mind so much. You're confused too, really.

Neither of you say anything until a few minutes later when his owl flies through the window and drops a dead mouse in you bowl. "Feeling better, Hedwig?" he asks as it hops across the table to him and starts coughing and spitting clumps of fur and bone onto the floor. "You must be close to normal if you're hunting again."

"What is it doing?" you shout. "Get that thing off the table! And get this mouse out of my bowl!"

Harry smiles and pats the owl on the head, whispering, "Good job," before looking up at you again. "That mouse is a present," he says. "It means she likes you. Though, I can't imagine why."

"I'm not cleaning it up."

"Fine," Harry says, plucking the mouse out of your milk and soggy cornflakes by its tail and swinging it in your face. "It's dead, you know. It can't hurt you."

"It's gross," you say, but he only rolls his eyes.

"You're gross."

"Shut your face," you say, not feeling particularly mad. Even when you parents were here to threaten him, you doubt he would have done so much without flinging it in your hair or sticking it down your shirt. Just as Harry starts to swing it towards you again, it jumps back onto his shoulder and bites him in the earlobe before climbing down onto the floor and scurrying out the front door.

"Ouch!" he says sitting down and holding his ear.

You smile. "Looks like it wasn't as dead as your freak bird thought." Across the table, the owl gives an apologetic ruffling of its feathers. "It's okay," you whisper as Harry looks on, still confused. "I don't like dead mice so much."

The next day, the owl, Hedwig, brings you a chocolate bar, and it takes two hours for Harry to stop laughing. You scowl at him and put it in your pocket to save for later. As much as you try to be mad at him, its nothing compared to that tremulous, violent anger that made you want to scream and slam your fists through walls and lay curled up in bed until everything outside your room disappeared. Even if you'll never admit it out loud, he was right. The magic is yours now, and you can make it do whatever you want.

You go out flying every morning, now, and sometimes in the evenings too if Harry isn't watching you, but he usually is. At first it took so much focus to do even the smallest things and usually to undo them, because even though the magic is yours, it works on its own too. That doesn't scare you anymore, maybe only because it isn't trying to scare you like it was before or maybe because you're starting to understand that it was only ever your fear of it that hurt you, and there's nothing to be afraid of anymore.

Now you hardly have to concentrate to control it, to make it do exactly what you want. It's getting warmer and easier to walk and easier to breathe. You pass Harry in the hallway sometimes, and he gives you funny looks and asks what you're so happy about.

You wonder if he's starting to notice how things are changing, how everything seems brighter and covered in more magic than before. You wonder if you should tell him but decide it would only make him mad. So you smile and you shrug and you keep walking with your hands in your pockets and his eyes on your back.

In August, the night sky puts on a show of falling stars and Harry and Dudley watch this more intently than the Death Eaters in the yard below. It's a small change, really, just shifting their eyes upwards, but that seems to make all the difference. Sometimes, Dudley falls asleep only minutes after it gets dark, and sometimes, he talks to Harry, and sometimes, he stares up into the sky with a half smile on his face, and those times, all the stars seem to dance.

One moonless night, Dudley climbs out onto the roof with Harry's telescope in one hand and a bag of crisps in the other, and Harry follows him, not bothering to tell himself that he's only concerned for the telescope.

"What?" Dudley asks as he turns around to see Harry looking at him.

"Huh?" Harry doesn't know what else to say. He's always looking. He can't help but look at Dudley, even when it's clear that the last thing Dudley wants is to be looked at. He wonders how the simplest, most uncomplicated thing in his life suddenly became the biggest mystery, and he wonders if Dudley was strange all along and no one ever looked close enough to see it. "Just be careful not to break anything," Harry tells him.

"I won't."

"Do you even know how to use a telescope?"

Dudley looks up at him and blinks. Instead of answering the question Harry asked only because he doesn't trust himself when the silence grows too thick between them, he answers the one Harry's really interested in, the one he hasn't put into words yet, not even in his own head, the one about why everything's suddenly very different even when it seems like nothing really changed. "I wanted to do magic once," Dudley says with a shrug and stares at Harry a few moments longer before turning back to the telescope.

"What? You?"

"Yeah, me." Dudley looks up at him again, and his eyes don't seem to have changed despite the quickly darkening sky. "I didn't want there to be something you could do that I couldn't do, something you had that my—my parents couldn't give me."

"Oh," Harry says squinting down at the street.

"And I figured there had to be a way I could use it to pound you without having get up," he adds. "There is, you know. I'm pretty sure I could manage it now."

"I'll keep that in mind," Harry says, rolling his eyes, and below him all the streetlights flicker to life.

Dudley drops the crisps onto the roof and gives him a weak punch in the arm. "You'd better."

"You know what I wanted?" Harry asks, sitting down and stretching his legs out in front of him. "I wanted to be normal. I wanted to be able to fit in to a place like this— a house that looks like all the other houses and not be different from anyone else."

"That's rubbish," Dudley says, still fumbling with the telescope. "You never wanted to, not early on at least. You were happy when the letters came— the letters about your school, and you were always acting weird before that, sneaking about, hiding in that cupboard—"

Harry stares at him incredulously. "I lived in that cupboard. I was locked in half the time."

Dudley shrugs. He finally gets the legs of the telescope adjusted so it can stand despite the slant of the roof and looks into the eyepiece pointed at the sky. Then, he turns it downwards to the yard and looks rather more intently. He doesn't look at Harry when he speaks. "You used it, though— magic, I mean. You used it to try and scare me."

"I needed to use something or you'd never stop beating me up."

Dudley looks back at him, as if he can't imagine why he wouldn't want to be beat up constantly. "You don't get it," he says. "You could have fought back. I wanted you to fight back."

"Hardly a fair fight— half the time you used your friends to hold me down."

"And that giant never did anything to me?" Dudley asks, voice shaking. "Or those twins? Or that—that thing in the alley? I'm the one who needed to use something, and all I had was ruddy Piers Polkiss."

"Oh," Harry says, not able to think of anything else.

Dudley flops down beside him, and Harry thinks, for a second, that the roof might cave in. "Yeah."

"What are we doing out here?" Harry asks, trying to change the subject. He tilts his head up towards the telescope. "And what are you doing going through my stuff?"

"I missed being outside," Dudley says, taking a deep breath, "and I wanted to try something." He points down to the Death Eaters already milling about the lawn. "Do you think I could make them go away?"

"What? No!" Harry nearly shouts, but there's already a smile creeping over Dudley's large face.

"See," Dudley says, fishing around in his pockets. "I have an idea." He pulls out a medium-sized grey stone and rolls it between the palms of his hands before holding it up for Harry to inspect. "We could throw these at them."

"That's your idea?" Harry asks in disbelief. "They'll see us."

"No, they won't," Dudley says, reaching into his pockets again, this time pulling out something long and shimmering that Harry recognizes immediately, even though he hasn't been able to see it for over a month. "Anyway, I found this it can make us disappear, except we really won't. We'll be under it the whole time."

"I know what it does. It's called and invisibility cloak, and it's mine. You should stop going through my things. You already ate all the candy."

"I know," Dudley says shrugging. "You don't have to be so greedy about it. I'm trying to get these death muncher guys to go away, and all you can do is talk about candy."

Harry gapes, wondering if he should pinch himself to make sure this isn't really some horribly twisted dream. He doesn't stop gaping until Dudley stands and flings three stones into the mass of black robes. "Stop it," he hisses, grabbing Dudley's arm and trying to pull him down. "They still have guns. What if they shoot at us?"

Dudley uses his foot to push the invisibility cloak in Harry's direction. "Cover up then."

"What if they shoot where the stones are coming from?"

Dudley nods and looks like he's concentrating very hard on something for a second and then says, "Oh, their guns don't work anymore."

"What? You're mad."

"No." He searches his pockets again, this time pulling his hand up with the sneakoscope resting still in his palm. "See," he says holding it up to Harry's face, "nothing to be scared of."

Harry pushes his hand away. "All that means is that you're too mad to be properly afraid. Now get down."

"No," he says defiantly, throwing another stone down. "Now watch this." The stone hits one of the Death Eaters square in the back of the head and it turns around and looks directly at them, or at least at the place they are. Even without the invisibility cloak on Harry's pretty sure the Death Eaters can't actually see them. "Come on," Dudley whispers. "Shoot it!"

"Shut up," Harry hisses, standing up and clasping his hands over Dudley's mouth from behind, but Dudley doesn't thrash and shove him away like he expected, instead he starts to laugh, and the surprise of it causes Harry to loosen his grip

"Gee oof," Dudley mumbles, still laughing. Harry's hands drop to his shoulders and stay there. "Look," he says pointing down at the lawn, and Harry does.

Below him, many of the Death eaters are lying on the ground flailing about while others stomp over them screaming and mumbling and bumping into each other. Of the words Harry can make out, the most common are 'soap' and 'eyes' and 'ahhh.' Then he sees them, hundreds of bubbles rising up against the night sky and realizes dozens are already clinging to his clothes and caught in Dudley's hair. "Bubbles?" he asks, fighting a smile. "You made their guns blow bubbles?"

Dudley's smile grows a bit wider. "I had one that did that once."

"Yeah, I remember."

He prods his finger into a few of the bubbles on Harry's shirt, popping them. "I think I broke when I figured out I couldn't really shoot you with it."

"I think it was actually when you used it to knock me over the head."

Dudley's smile drops a bit but doesn't disappear completely. "Go on, throw it," he says pressing a stone into Harry's hand. "It's fun. I used to toss these at cars all the time. Once one drove straight of the rode."

Harry rolls his eyes. And tosses the stone into the fray, knocking one of the taller Death Eaters behind the knee to send him falling face forward into the back of another one, and before he can ask or admit it really was quite fun, Dudley's nodding in approval and handing him another stone.

It doesn't take long for the Death Eaters to leave, some try to throw stones and clumps of dirt back up at them, but those turn into toy airplanes mid-flight and veer away from them to do steep dives and wild corkscrews before flying off into the night. Only one hits Harry in the head, and he's fairly sure Dudley did that on purpose.

When they're gone, Harry turns the telescope upwards for a while and watches the stars twirl until it makes him dizzy. Then, he sits back down to find Dudley's asleep and very still, using his balled up invisibility cloak as a pillow. He lays his head back on the roof and closes his eyes and dreams he's back on his broom, flying over a dark countryside with only stars to light the way. The Death Eaters won't come back the next night or the night after. They won't find their way to Number Four Privet Drive ever again. This knowledge seems to bleed in through his half-conscious thoughts and wrap around him like a warm blanket, and he doesn't need to watch Dudley to know he's right there beside him.

He wakes slowly with the sun as its light starts to pour over the rows and rows of identical houses. Reaching over, he pokes Dudley in the stomach. "Hey? You alive?"

"Huh?" Dudley grunts, opening one eye.

"Oh, it's just you that you weren't moving, and you were so quiet I thought you might be dead."

"Disappointed?" Dudley asks, using his elbows and the roof to prop himself up.

Harry shrugs. "Not really."

Dudley stands, and Harry follows him towards the window. When he slips, Dudley grabs him by the arm and mutters, "Idiot" under his breath with a soft chuckle. Then, they go inside to find Hedwig on the kitchen table with another candy bar— chocolate— the only thing known to help someone recover after a run-in with a Dementor. Harry laughs, this time, because maybe Dudley isn't such a mystery anymore, and this time, Dudley laughs too.

"You're rubbing off on her," Harry says, and he doesn't think his owl is the only thing Dudley's rubbing off on. It's almost like he's everywhere at once, and the house seems to be reshaping itself to fit him. Dudley helps it by moving things around in ways that make hardly any sense, draping old jackets over chairs and putting hats on lamps. Every time Harry walks into a room, he expects to find Dudley there and usually does. Even when Dudley goes out in the mornings it feels like he's still around, as if he's filling the house with himself just to make it seem a little less empty.

When it gets dark, they wander around Privet Drive, and Harry rolls his eyes as Dudley throws stones at trashcans and playground equipment and one unfortunate cat. Sometimes, he stays at Dudley's side, and sometimes he runs ahead just because he's able to, and it feels good to breathe air that's not so thick and stifling. There's a cool breeze that sweeps through the streets at night, one strong enough to blow them both back and forth as they sit on the old, rusted swings, which are starting to look a lot less old and a lot less rusted than they did when Dudley first sat down. "I suppose they'd have to be in better shape not to break with you sitting on them," Harry says, half expecting to be punched in the face, but instead, Dudley blinks at him and starts laughing.

"Don't think you'll get away with anything," Dudley says a few minutes later, still breathing hard. "Just remember there are lots of ways I can get you now. You'd better be ready to fight back."

By the time they leave the playground, the swing set and the slide and the monkey bars are all taller and straighter and gleaming in the faint glow of the street lights. Harry falls twice walking back and stumbles the rest of the way with shortened strides because his feet don't seem to move as far as they should. At first, he thinks Dudley must have put his own weak version of a jelly legs jinx on him, but when he gets back inside and flops down on the sofa, he sees that the laces of his trainers are tied together. He smiles and makes plans to switch the sugar for salt at breakfast sometime when Dudley won't be expecting it.

For the next few days, Dudley can't stop laughing, and Harry begins to wonder if he'll forget how to do anything but laugh. But, the sun starts shining brighter, and the grass looks greener, and Aunt Petunia's flowers are growing so fast they seem to be taking over the entire lawn, and sometimes, Harry catches the feather duster floating over the shelves or the dishes washing themselves.

At night, there are owls everywhere covering roofs and lawns and every tree branch and lamp post as far as he can see. There are huge horned owls and eagle owls that hop boldly through the streets and barn owls that gather together on the hoods of cars. There are even a few snowy owls that Hedwig joins flying lazily over Privet Drive and Magnolia Crescent searching for moles or mice or mars bars.

A small, grey owl that looks almost exactly like Pig lands on Dudley's shoulder and sits still long enough for him to feed it a whole pocketful of miniature chocolate squares. Harry thinks about telling him that owls don't eat chocolate, but he doesn't feel like being wrong. Instead, he tosses some of Hedwig's owl treats out over the lawns and up into trees, and Dudley laughs when a tawny owl swoops down and starts pecking at his feet once he's run out.

He watches Dudley sleep, still and peaceful in his bed or on the couch or beneath the night sky when the owls have finally flown back to wherever they came from, and they can stay out on the lawn, knowing there won't be anymore Death Eaters searching for them. It's theirs now, Dudley's and his. They've found a way to bring safety with them wherever they go. Dudley's found it, to be fair, but Harry likes to think he had a hand in that, even if he's not sure exactly how any of it happened. Dudley doesn't seem to mind having him around anymore and seems amused more often than angry. He lets Harry kiss him, sometimes, and Harry thinks he tastes like the truly fresh air you can only get when you fly a few hundred meters off the ground and maybe just a bit like chocolate.

They sit on the roof again, laughing as owls gather on the sidewalks below, and Dudley makes the streetlamps turn on and of with the snapping of his fingers. It's all completely absurd and utterly impossible, and Harry ignores the whispered voice in the back of his that head tells him feeling like his can never last. Instead, he thinks about his friends and how happy they are. He thinks that the war has already been won, and that healing will come after, and he can lay back and watch the stars with Dudley as he waits, because there's nothing left to be scared of anymore.


	9. 9

**Chapter 9**

Clouds aren't fluffy at all, you find while you're out flying one morning, just wet, and by the time you got up far enough to feel them it was cold, and you couldn't breathe very well. You're not sure if you're getting better with Harry's broom, but you're certainly taking more risks on it, seeing how high and fast it can go long after your desire for speed and altitude has been satisfied. On the way back, you get too close to a tree, trying to do a tight turn around its base and run face first into sharp branches. It smarts at first, but you're too glad not to have poked an eye out to worry long, and you practice a few forward flips before flying home and hiding the broom in Harry's old cupboard.

You stop in the bathroom to wipe the sweat off your face and try to get your hair under control, which is quickly becoming a lost cause. When it first catches your eyes you think it's simply a mark on the mirror or some trick Harry's playing on you. Then you touch it, wincing at the pain the slightest brush of your fingers causes and realize it must have come from your run in with the tree. You reach out with the magic, trying to make it disappear or at least turn it a little less red, but all your attempts fail. No matter what you do, there's still a broken, crocked line running down the center of your forehead.

At breakfast, Harry gives you odd looks and asks if you had a run in with any dark wizards lately, but he shuts up when he finds out you put hot pepper in his orange juice. He coughs for a few minutes and rubs at his, eyes and you begin to wonder if you should make him better when he clears his throat and swallows hard. "I suppose that was for the sugar?"

It really has nothing to do with the bowl of salty cereal you ate a few days before. You want to tell him that it's for the letters and the pig's tail and the time you nearly choked on your own tongue and for every threat he ever made about having his wand in his pocket to curse you with and every time he looked at you, as if he couldn't imagine ever seeing anyone stupider. You want to tell him that no matter what you do it'll never make things even, but instead, you smile and say, "Yeah, it's for the sugar."

He nods and mumbles something about not getting in the way of your food again and then snickers to himself until you kick his legs under the table. "Stop it," he says getting up and pouring a glass of milk, and you shut your eyes and make the soap flakes vanish from it right before he takes his first sip. "Guess you forgot to do anything to the milk, huh?"

"Yeah," you say. "I forgot."

"Are you okay?" he asks, walking behind you. "Are there any bumps?" You nearly jump out of the chair when you feel him prodding you in the head. "It's pretty clear you banged this on something, if only because you haven't punched me yet."

"I will if you don't quit it," you growl as he starts pressing harder and tracing his fingers over your still-sore forehead.

"Don't worry, Dud," he says, chuckling to himself. "Your head's still plenty thick, and I doubt your brain is large enough to be noticeably damaged."

"Shut up," you say, shoving one of his hands away. "Stop it."

"Fine." You feel him ruffling your hair until you're sure it's even messier than it was when you came back from flying. "I'll stop if you stop too." He walks back to his chair and straightens the jacket over it before leaving you to try and figure out what he meant.

It's been hard to think about Harry with a clear head because he's always around you, now, like the magic, and like the magic, he's not really trying to hurt you. Maybe he doesn't want to fight at all. It's strange to think you could trust someone— trust Harry when all you know is how to throw the first few punches and hope those will be enough. You've never had the endurance for too a long struggle. You get tired, and you slip, and you fall, and there are some things you never could fight against, but it doesn't matter if those things aren't fighting either. It doesn't matter if you both agree to stop. You still think Harry's a freak and always will be, but you make the thumbtacks vanish from his bed and the glue from his bottle of shampoo, and you get up and tell the dishes to start washing themselves.

All the pictures are moving, now, even your old finger paintings, which are mostly just hand prints and lazy squiggles, done all in blue, red and yellow. Your four year old hand waves at you and the lines beside it lengthen and squirm over the paper like tiny snakes. On the shelves, your mum's porcelain and glass figurines are pacing back and forth and occasionally dancing with each other, even the furniture you dressed is starting to walk from room to room. In fact, the only still thing in the house is Harry, who's usually sprawled out in front of the television.

You find an old Polaroid and take a picture of him lying on the sofa. The television's on flashing odd colors as some band jumps about with their instruments, but he's looking at directly the camera, directly at you, and after a few seconds he gives a half-hearted wave and a very exaggerated, very fake smile. "You're going to come out looking completely stupid," you tell him, shaking the picture as it develops, "either that or insane."

He reclines further, stretching his arms behind his head. "Don't you think I'm both?"

"Well, yeah."

"There was a boy at my school who liked taking pictures," he says, yawning. "Did I ever tell you that?"

"No," you say, wondering what he's on about. "Why would you have?"

Harry shrugs. "Well there was, anyway." You think about the evil wizard spoken of in your letter and the people with masks stumbling through your lawn at night and being much too cold. "Where is he now?" you ask, not wanting to know the answer, not wanting to hear about people dying or being lost, not even if they are freaks, but Harry only shrugs again and scratches his head. "Probably still taking pictures," he says. "Not so much has changed, really. He was bloody annoying at school though, always— _Look here, Harry! Wave, Harry!_ _Smile, Harry! _There were a lot of times I really didn't feel like smiling."

"I never told you to."

"I can't help it." He sits up and stretches his arms again. "You just make me so happy, Dud."

You roll your eyes and try not to laugh. "Well you're definitely insane."

"You already told me that," he says, grabbing your arm and pulling you down onto the sofa. "This isn't so bad, is it?"

You raise your eyebrows and scoot a few inches away from him. "I thought you were going to leave, for good, I mean, not just going on a day trip to your weirdo friend's house."

"Not yet," he says, jabbing a finger into your chest. "There's work still to be done"

"And you're the freak who has to do it. You said you would"

He rakes his hand through his hair a few times and knocks his glasses into your lap with the heel of his hand. "Maybe I don't want to be anymore. Besides, you don't trust me, do you?"

"Well, I think I—"

"You'd better not," he says as you push his glasses back into his hands. "I don't want to be the one everybody trusts anymore."

"So you're lazy now?"

"Yeah, something like that." Harry puts his glasses back on, taking care to hook them behind his ears and straighten them over his eyes. Then he kisses you, and you kiss back to show him this can't be a game or a joke or a fight anymore and to show him that you really do know what you're doing. "I still think you can, you know," he says, pulling back and adjusting his glasses again. "I didn't ever really stop thinking it."

"Oh. Okay." You nod and look down at the wrinkled picture in your hands. With hardly a thought it flattens itself, and you see Harry sitting on the sofa, smiling and waving and laughing and looking very pleased about something. You think it could have been a good picture if it wasn't of him.

He plucks it from your hands and starts laughing again, even though you don't remember him laughing the first time. "I can see the headlines now," he says, "the brave Harry Potter spends summer lazing about while hundreds of families still need saving."

"What?" you ask. "If hundreds of families need saving, how come we're only bothering with mine?"

He looks very surprised for a second then nods a few times and begins to smile. "That's the way it works at first. You'll see."

"Oh," you say, not pressing it anymore than that. He might as well know you trust him now, even if he won't let you tell him so. "They really wrote articles about you?"

"Yeah," he says, smile growing. "You're lucky Skeeter got stuck as a beetle when magic stopped working right. I'd hate to see what she'd make of this— us, I mean."

You stick your tongue out and feel your face twisting in disgust. "Ewww! Someone really writes stuff like that?"

"Yeah," he says in a way that tells you he had a hard time believing it too once. "Yeah, someone really does."

"About you? And other freaks read it?"

Harry shrugs. "Most witches and wizards are a lot like your mum that way. They'd rather hear about sensational crimes and scandalous affairs than any real news."

You look at him, not sure whether to laugh or be sick. "We are not having a scandalous affair!"

"I don't know," he says smirking. "You did swoop around on a broomstick to stealing food, very dashing, that, as long as it was dark enough that no one saw you." He stops for a moment to laugh and point to the picture you took. "Then, there's me posing for you— Boy-who-lived excited to see his pig-like cousin. Is it real romance or just a summer fling?"

"Neither!" you shout, trying to wrestle it out of his hands. "Give me that! Shut up!"

"Fine," he says after a few minutes of switching the picture from hand to hand and behind his back to keep it away from you. You could have had it at anytime, really. You could have used magic or just punched him, but that's not the point anymore. He hands it to you and rubs his eyes for a moment. "Is there still cake in the refrigerator?"

You reach out with your mind to make sure there will be by the time he gets there. "Yeah, I think so."

"Okay," he says, getting up and pinching your cheeks with both hands. "See you later, Diddykins."

"Gee orfff!"

When he finally listens to you and lets go, you lean back into the sofa and look at the picture again. You decide it might really be good, even if it is of Harry, and you put it in a frame overtop a picture of Aunt Marge and Ripper, who both growl as Harry laughs and waves, and you laugh back.

"You're ready," Harry says at breakfast the next morning, between bites of the candy bar that his owl brought for you.

You look of from your bowl of cheerios, and even though your focus has shifted the banana on the side of your placemat keeps peeling itself. "Ready for what?"

"Ready to find your parents," he says, looking very serious except for the smudge of chocolate on his nose.

"How do you know?"

He looks back to his owl, perched by the window and waves a letter in his hand. "A friend of mine thinks now would be a good time something about the moon and ocean tides and a timetable he made. I'm not sure he has any clue what he's talking about."

"Oh," you say, wrinkling your forehead. "This is how you people plan things?"

He folds the letter and puts it in his pocket before looking directly at you. "You're ready," he says. "You're the one who has to do this, and you've been ready for some time now, and you're going to get it done today." He smirks and plants his elbows on the table. "That's how we plan things."

"I'm ready?" you ask.

"Well, you did find me on a broomstick."

"So I can use—"

"No," he says before you can finish asking. "You're not flying on my firebolt ever again. I don't know how you managed it the first time without breaking your head open. We're taking a bus."

You want to laugh and tell him that you've been flying on his broom everyday, that you can now manage six back flips in a row without getting dizzy and that you've taken it into the city and done loops around the spires of Westminster Abbey and stopped for a rest on the roof of the British Museum, but instead, you nod and roll your eyes and say, "Okay, we can take a stupid bus."

Harry stands up, smiling wider. "You'll do it," he says, pulling you up from your chair.

"You'll find them— you really will, and who knows what else after that—Hogwarts, Hogsmeade, Diagon alley, the Burrow, everything!"

You don't really know what he's talking about, but you smile back.

Harry's in an open field, holding Dudley's hand, trying to keep him in place as he shakes and swallows hard and bends his knees as if he might try to bolt at any second.

"Get off," he growls through gritted teeth. "Get off. Get off now!"

Harry sighs and plants his other hand on Dudley's shoulder, wondering just how long he has before Dudley manages to shove him away and why he's trying so hard to hold on. "No. If I get off you'll try to run away, not that you'll get very far."

To Harry's surprise Dudley doesn't kick or punch. He tries to pull his hand out of Harry's grip, but his efforts are weaker than they should be, and he tries to shout, but his voice is slipping away. "N-no I won't! Let go!"

"No! You're doing this. I don't care whether you want to or not! It doesn't matter!"

"Get off! I—" Harry hears him yell before whatever else he was saying is stolen away by a blast of impossibly cold wind.

"No!" Harry yells back as the winds continue to pick up.

"Stop it!" Dudley begins to shiver more and seems to have gained back some of his strength. When he tries to pull away again, he nearly manages it, but Harry stops trying to stand his ground and allows his whole body to be jerked forward. "Leave me alone!"

The gusts are so hard even the tiny leaves and specks of dirt that fly at Harry's skin feel like pinpricks and then like fire. "You're the only one who can do this!" Harry shouts over the wind and the claps of thunder from somewhere in the distance. "If you don't—"

It's not any other noise that interrupts him, but silence, unnaturally complete silence. He takes a step towards Dudley, who has gone very still, and he doesn't even hear the grass rustling beneath his feet. "Let go," Dudley whispers, shutting his eyes. "Just let go."

"Fine, quit!" Harry shouts into the quiet, tightening his grip on Dudley's fat fingers. "I don't care if you never see your stupid parents again."

Dudley takes a few unsteady steps forward, dragging Harry with him. "I'm not," he says, "I'm not quitting. They're in the house."

"House?" Harry asks, but Dudley doesn't seem to hear him.

"I'm trying to get in, but-but it's trying to keep me out . . . my head . . . hurts."

"There's a house?" Harry asks again, and Dudley finally opens his eyes and looks up at him.

"Yes. . ." He reaches his free hand out in front of him and then pulls it back, as if it's been burned.

"What was that?"

"Nothing— something— I don't know. Just shut up, will you. I'm trying to concentrate."

"Oh."

Dudley looks down at their entwined hands, sneering. "And get off of me."

Harry lets go quickly and takes a step back as flashing lights begin to erupt around Dudley, but Dudley doesn't move except to shut his eyes and reach his hand out again until it presses flat against an invisible surface. His face is scrunched up in pain, and there's blood trickling down from the scrape on his forehead.

There's a loud crackling sound, and the air shimmers, lighting with hundreds of white sparks that swirl around them like tiny fireflies before slowly flickering out, and for the first time in months, Harry can feel magic again. Slowly, a large house comes into focus right in front of Dudley's outstretched hand.

He watches as the walls become brighter and the corners become sharper, more defined. He watches as the field becomes a street and dozens of other houses pop up all around them, and he whispers, "I knew it," even though he would never have imagined Dudley doing more than trying to get his parents back, even though he never really expected him to succeed.

Dudley turns around to look at him, red faced and out of breath. "Shut up," he says before falling back against the side of the house to keep standing.

Harry swallows hard and takes a few steps forward. "You okay?"

"I will be," Dudley rasps, sliding down the wall. "I will be when I don't have to hear you anymore."

"Come on." Harry grabs his arm and uselessly tries to pull him up. "The hard part's over."

Dudley gives him an odd look. "No it's not," he says, still gasping for air. "This is just the start of it."

The magic snaps against Harry's skin and sets his hair on end. "It's over," repeats, feeling uncomfortably warm and beginning to shiver. He tries to breathe the magic in and grab hold of it, but it keeps slipping away from him, so instead, he tightens his grip on Dudley's arm and keeps pulling.

"No," Dudley says, shoving him away and struggling to stand up on his own. There's something desperate in his voice that makes Harry wonder whether he believes himself or he just wants to very badly. "No, you're wrong."

"I was right about you being able to do this, wasn't I?" Dudley doesn't say anything. He doesn't even look at Harry. He tilts his head back, and his eyes widen, as if he's just noticed the sparks still flying through the air. "Wasn't I?"

"Shut up," Dudley mumbles, watching as a small pile of sparks gather on his hand the palm of his hand, but he's starting to smile, and his face is gradually returning to its normal pinkish color.

Harry's shivers subside, leaving nothing behind, but a warm, comfortable tingle. "Come on," he says. "We're not done here yet."

Dudley nods and leads the way to the back of the house, where they find his parents on the door step looking lost and very confused.

Dudley clears his throat, but that doesn't seem to catch their attention. "Er . . .hi," he says shoving his hands in his pockets.

Uncle Vernon is the first to notice them and after a few seconds of gaping he manages to find his voice. "Dudders? What the ruddy hell is going on here?"

Dudley turns his head back and gives Harry a quick look that's one half smile and the half a question he can't bring himself to ask out loud and may not even have the words to ask with. Harry only shrugs and whispers, "Tell them something."

Dudley's nods and winks before turning back to his parents, and by then, Aunt Petunia has ran over to Dudley and begun hugging him. "Harry used his freak powers to find you," he says in his best 'I deserve forty seven presents' voice. "I made him. He said it would be impossible, but I wouldn't leave him alone until he did it, and I also made him do the cooking and wash the dishes and sweep the floor."

"Good on you, Dudders," Uncle Vernon booms clapping his hand down on Dudley's shoulder. "Way to show him who's boss."

"You've been okay haven't you?" Aunt Petunia asks.

"Yeah fine, Mum."

"You've had enough to eat?"

Just watching them has always enough to make Harry sick, but this time there's a strange sinking feeling that comes along with it, and he crosses his arms over his chest as the cold winds return. "Obviously," he mutters in a voice louder than the one he meant to use, loud enough to make Aunt Petunia let go of Dudley and turn on him looking more furious than he's ever seen her.

"You," she snaps as if that's the worst possible thing she could call him. "I bet you wanted to run off with the rest of those freaks you call your friends and not care at all about what we've had to endure because of you. That's the way you people are no discipline, no responsibility. Just like your—"

"Mum!" Dudley shouts, and Harry watches his expression become suitably smug when everyone's eyes turn back to him, and for once, he's thankful that Dudley can't go two minutes without being the center of attention. But instead of demanding his parents give him video games or money or whatever else he thinks he's owed for having to spend nearly two months without them, he just stands there, and when his smile falls away he looks very uncomfortable.

"What is it then?" Uncle Vernon asks, and Dudley swallows hard and gives Harry a look that he can't quite read.

"Harry kept these really weird guys out of the house," he says all in one breath. "They were trying to get me, but he kept them out using magic, and he didn't have to do that." Dudley's not a good liar by any means, but he's had a lot of practice telling his mother he was going to tea parties when he was really going to smoke and beat up younger kids, and she's had a lot of practice believing him.

She puts a hand to her chest, horrified at the thought of anyone wanting to hurt her precious son. "Alright, Sweetums, if you say so."

Harry's caught between gaping and rolling his eyes when Uncle Vernon turns to glance at him and nods with something that looks like approval and maybe even acceptance and says, "It's about time the ruddy stuff did something useful." Beside them, Aunt Petunia rubs Dudley's shoulders and flattens Dudley's hair and talks about what a brave boy her little Diddykins has been.

Harry thinks he might hurt himself from laughing so hard or at least Dudley might hurt him, but Dudley's laughing too, and somehow, without his parents noticing, he grabs Harry by the hand and pulls him closer. It feels like the first time Harry touched the wand that was meant only for him or the first time he saw Hogwarts shining from across the lake or the first time he flew. "You were right," Dudley whispers to him. "I can't believe it, you freak. You were really right."

Harry wonders vaguely if the Dudley's parents notice that there are sparks raining down around them and covering their clothes or that Dudley seems to be floating a few inches off the ground. "So were you," Harry whispers back. "Good job, Dud."

One day, Dudley could wake up after having saved the world and wonder what happened, what changed, what step he took that could never be reversed, and this would be the answer— knowing how to get up after you've fallen, learning that the truth is rarely comfortable, and the future will never be safe but should be looked forward to anyway. Harry smiles. He didn't ever really need to tell Dudley what the consequences of saving one thing could be. Somehow, he knew all along.

The ride back to Number Four Privet Drive is quicker and quieter than it should be, and while Uncle Vernon was getting the car out of a nearby garage, Harry was able to sneak a quick look at the house they stayed in. It was a very drab, normal house filled with very drab, normal things that looked overpriced and just a bit pretentious. All in all, it was a place perfectly suited for the Dursleys, and for some reason, that made Harry smile.

Back in Dudley's room, Harry's lying on the bed with a videogame controller in his hands and absentmindedly zapping the aliens on the television screen with some sort of laser gun. Beside him, Dudley's staring down at a newspaper, mumbling to himself.

"Be quiet," Harry says nudging Dudley's leg with his foot. "I'm trying to concentrate."

Dudley snorts and flips through the pages some more. "A whole neighborhood appeared out of nowhere," he says. "You'd think someone would have noticed something."

"Not muggles." Harry watches with a grim sense of amusement as his spaceman character loses its final life to a cloud of poison mist. "Muggles only believe what's easiest to believe. If it doesn't make enough sense, they won't let themselves notice it."

"That's not true," Dudley says, rustling the paper and setting it down on his nightstand. "That's not true at all."

"Yeah it is."

"No it's—" Dudley begins, but Harry doesn't let him finish.

"Tell me, are you doing magic?"

"Shhhh," Dudley hisses. "Don't—"

"Because before you said you weren't, and I wonder if the fact that you made about fifty houses pop up in an empty field might have changed your mind."

"Shut up," Dudley whispers, holding a hand threateningly close to Harry's mouth, as if he might use it to shut him up he has to. "Someone will hear if you keep going on like that."

Harry gives an exhausted sigh and lets his head flop back on the pillow as he waits for the game to reload. "No they won't. That's my point. If they do, they'll come up with their own explanation that won't involve anything unnatural."

"Fine," he says, tentatively moving his hand away, "but if you're loud they'll hear that you're in my room, and that's nearly as bad."

"You can tell them you're making me clean it."

"My parents aren't stupid." Dudley glances around his room, which looks like it's been hit by several tornadoes and blown up dozens of times but really just hasn't been cleaned for about as long as they've both been alive. "They wouldn't believe that," he says with a smile. "No one would."

Harry wants to tell him that they really are that stupid, and if he admits it he might have a chance of not turning out the exact same way, but Dudley's already getting good at noticing things, so all he says is, "Okay, fine."

"They're not," Dudley repeats firmly, and Harry remembers he's already quite good at noticing lies. He wonders if they'll spend the rest of the afternoon arguing and whether he has any energy left for it, but he's pulled from his thoughts when a tiny owl zips in through the window and immediately begins pecking at his head. He looks over at Dudley, who's biting his bottom lip and turning very red.

"Go on," Harry says, "can't have you suffocating."

"That's great!" he shouts, laughing louder than Harry's ever heard him. "If you could see your face—wish I had the camera!"

"And you told me to be quiet," Harry mutters before turning his attention back to the owl in his hair. "Hey, Pig, lay off, alright."

"What did you just call it?" Dudley takes a piece of chocolate out of his pocket and holds it out it out until Pig flaps over and starts eating.

"Pig," Harry says. "That's his name. It's short for Pigwidgeon." Dudley smirks and tosses another two pieces of chocolate down onto the bed for Pig to nibble on. "Good to see you finally have him living up to it."

Dudley nods. "That means impossible things are happening."

Harry rakes a hand through his hair and pulls out a few feathers. "What?"

"Pigs fly," Dudley says and starts laughing to himself again.

Harry rolls his eyes and shakes his head and kisses Dudley on the side of his mouth. "Impossible, huh, is that what this is?"

"All of it," Dudley whispers, "completely impossible."

After snatching the letter off Pig's foot, Harry settles back down and pokes Dudley in the side with his finger. "Speaking of pigs flying, what did you do with my broom? You didn't break it on the way back, did you?"

"No," he says, pushing Harry's hand away. "It's in the cupboard."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"So you put it right back after coming home?" Harry asks.

"Er—yes," Dudley says, flattening his hair and looking incredibly guilty.

"So it's not broken at all? Not snapped in half? Not dented? Not completely bent out of shape from you sitting on it?" Harry stands up to jump away from Dudley's thrown pillow, and there's a loud crack beneath his feet when he lands.

"Hey!" Dudley shouts.

"Uh—"

"You talk about me breaking things."

"Look around," Harry says indicating the broken toys lining Dudley's shelves, and Dudley narrows his eyes at him. "Well, it's not like you can't fix it if you want to."

"How could I fix a . . .Oh . . ."

"Yeah."

For a second, his face screws in concentration. "Does it feel fixed?" he asks as Harry carefully sits back down.

"Not really," Harry says looking up at Dudley's eyes, which are still narrowed. "What?"

"Your hair's grown back."

Harry reaches around and feels hair, rough and stubbly where there the bare patch had been. "About time."

"It looks terrible," Dudley says, smiling again. "I might have to tell Mum to cut it like she used to."

Harry stretches his arms and lets his head flop back onto the pillow. "You won't."

"Fine, I won't, but you owe me."

He gives an exaggerated sigh and rolls his eyes. "Aren't I lucky?"

"Yes," Dudley says, lying down beside him, and Harry's closes his eyes and feels the jagged, painful worry he'd been carrying with him smooth over and fall away until everything seems perfectly balanced as it hasn't been in a very long time. "Yes," Dudley repeats, and Harry can't think of any reason to disagree.

Two days later, Hermione calls on the phone swearing she started seeing runes again.

Five days later, Ron shows up on the doorstep in freshly pressed dress robes to tell him that the Burrow's put itself back together and invite him to stay. When Harry refuses, he only nods and tells him to be careful, and Harry wants to say there's no reason and now's finally the time he doesn't have to be careful, but something in Ron's eyes stops him from doing anything but nodding back and whispering, "You too."

A week later, Harry's wand starts shooting off sparks in every direction.

It starts when the broom will no longer jump into your hands and when it feels cold to the touch and when it doesn't fly. Harry waves a letter from his friends in front of your face too fast for you to read it and tells you that what you've done is more than find just one house or one neighborhood, and you tell yourself you might be tired from it, but you don't feel tired. You feel cold and jumpy and less sure of yourself, and you wonder why you parents aren't asking what's wrong or why you start shivering sometimes despite the heat. You wonder if they notice at all.

Harry watches as you pick up your clothes from the chairs and throw them on the floor of your room. He watches you tapping the picture frames and looking in the refrigerator and staring at the dishes in the sink, but he doesn't say anything and neither do you. Before you can scream at him to stop watching, he kisses you right there in the kitchen with your parents sitting in front of the television one room away. "You know they won't find out," he whispers before you can tell him they will, and that makes you want to scream more, but instead, you swallow hard and press your hands against the wall to stay standing when the magic starts flashing all around you.

You don't talk much during the day. You play on your computer and with your video games, but neither seems very interesting anymore. At night, you follow Harry as he walks around the neighborhood with his wand and shows you what new tricks he can do. Summer's fading, but everyday he gets brighter and can manage something just a little more spectacular. Everyday you feel less real, and it gets harder to breathe.

Sometimes, it seems like you're falling apart slowly, and sometimes it seems like you're disappearing, even though you're just as big as ever. Sometimes the sight of your own shadow against the wall makes your heart jump by coming so unexpected, and it's only Harry's odd looks in your direction that tell you you're really there. You don't know whether to be thankful or hate him.

Nothing feels right, not the twisted covers of your bed or the wrinkled, fragile pages of newspaper beneath your fingers— stupid newspapers that still don't say anything about what's really happening in the world.

Harry wakes you up in the middle of the night and tells you, you were screaming, and you're lucky you have him to blame it on if your parents notice at all, but you don't feel very lucky. You stare into the dark corners of where your walls meet and out the window at the empty lawns and streets, hearing nothing but your own breath, and no matter how many blankets you take from the hall closet, they can't stop you from shivering when cold winds whip through your room.

Your father promises you a job at Grundings to start in the fall, and you wonder if you have any power left to keep leaves on the trees and stop the days from getting shorter. You sit at the kitchen table, starring at the milk bottle and then back at the bowl of cereal in front of you, and nothing happens until Harry comes in and pours it for you and starts talking how he's going to visit some wizard shops to buy some wizard things and looks at you strangely when you tell him to shut his stupid face.

When he's gone, you sneak into his room. You look at his pictures, but they don't move, and you find his broom leaning against the wall and try to hold it one last time, but it's so cold it nearly freezes you hand off, and you peer through the eyepiece of his telescope and see nothing but black.

You find his top in your pocket and cradle it in your hands for a few moments before setting it on the floor. "Go on, spin," you whisper, and you try making it twirl yourself, but it only wobbles slightly before falling over onto its side. You leave it there on his floor and go back to your own room. You try watching television and playing _Mega Mutilation Four _on your play station two, but you can't seem to concentrate on either. You lie down and try to sleep, thinking it will be easier when it isn't so dark, but you can't relax and clear your head.

There's only one thing you can think of properly, and it's sitting in an otherwise empty shoe box in the bottom drawer of your dresser surrounded by a growing pile of clothes that are too small for you but too good for Harry. You bite your lip, and you clench your fists, and you try to focus on anything else, but it's useless. There are some things you never could fight against.

There are no sparks when you lift the lid off the shoebox this time, and there's no warm tingle of magic when you hold the last letter in your hands. Once again you set it on your bed, and once again you watch as Harry's name changes to yours under your trembling fingers, and once again you open it by tearing the thick paper rather than breaking the seal.

_Dudley Dursley_

_Second floor_

_Largest Bedroom_

_Twice-broken bed_

_4 Privet Drive_

_Little Whinging _

_Surrey_

_This letter is not for you. It never was, and by now you should know better than to open other people's mail. You would have done well to mind your own business, but you never did pay attention to past warnings, no matter what it cost you. Keep in mind that you have more yet to lose._

_This letter was for your cousin, Harry Potter. It was meant to be seen by him alone, and the truths it contains are not for the eyes of fat, spoiled, muggle children, and you are a muggle, Dudley, and a child. No matter what past events have led you to believe. You were never anything else. You know by now that your cousin is rather extraordinary. Gifted, I believe, is the word your schools used for it, and while he far surpassed your abilities in reading and maths, it was not those subjects where his true talents were found. You see, Harry is still a wizard— the greatest wizard of the age— vanquisher of the Dark Lord Voldemort and restorer of magic to magic to our world. _

_No matter how your parents tried to stop him, he came to Hogwarts school to learn magic. He did things and saw things a boy like you could never dream of, though you've had a taste of it now, haven't you? Be careful, Dudley, he is able to destroy you with a word, and your usefulness has just run out. It will be wise to mind yourself around him. _

_Albus Dumbledore,_

_Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry_

You hear your heart beating in your ears and feel your breath hitch in your chest. You turn the volume of your television up, and your computer starts beeping as the magic still swirls around you prodding and mocking. You sit on the floor with your back pressed against the wall when standing makes you too dizzy, and you feel so cold that you can't imagine ever being warm or whole or happy again.

There is a quietness that weaves itself through all the dull, everyday sounds surrounding you— a silence that rises above the electronic roar. You force yourself to stand again just for a second, just long enough for you to slam the window shut and get one last look out into the empty sky before the colors become duller than you've ever seen them.

In your room, everything is still, and the air's getting thick and uncomfortable, as the flashing slows, and the winds stop, and the magic begins to fade until there's nothing left to tell you it was ever there but an old, crumpled piece of ordinary paper lying on your bed.

You want it back. You want it even if it means having to take every horrible thing that comes along with it and made you hate it worse than you ever thought you could hate anything. You think, for a moment, that if you hadn't bothered listening to Harry and went looking for your parents you might still have the magic, but that was your decision, in the end, and you would have made it again, even knowing what would happen after. You try to reach out with you mind, but you don't remember how, and it doesn't really matter, because there's nothing for you to reach for. It never was yours.

In the hallway, Harry's knocking on your door, talking about the places he's been and the things he's brought back for you to see, but you close you eyes and sink into the complete noiselessness, letting it wrap itself around you and muffle every sound, except your heartbeat and your ragged breathing. You hear a few last, far-away shouts from Harry before his voice fades, and you feel one final jolt of magic as the thought of him trying to kiss you makes you sick.

You've always known you couldn't win against something that you couldn't punch and kick and shout into submission, but for a few days at least, you thought that if you kept your head and refused to admit defeat it might not be able to win against you either. For a few days, you could fly and laugh and not be afraid of anything. But you've lost, now. In your head, you see black robes against a black sky, and a tiny voice whispers that this is what you knew when you were sure of nothing else, and this is what you said you wanted all along.

It's getting dark, and you shiver.

**The End**


End file.
